The 10 Most Rewatchable Christmas Movies, Ranked

More than any other holiday, the Christmas season comes fully equipped with movies that you might end up watching whether you want to or not. Holiday marathons set up camp on several TV channels for most of December, and if your Christmas-celebrating family isn’t throwing on a virtual yule log during group celebrations, there’s a good chance they’ve got “Home Alone” or “A Christmas Story” on in the background of festivities. Plenty of Christmas movies aren’t actually that great, but they have a way of needling their way into the fabric of the holiday season and becoming part of an unshakeable tradition. Others are true masterpieces, capable of catching us off guard and cracking open our hearts.

It’s worth noting that some of the best on-screen Christmas stories ever made don’t make the cut here because they don’t actually reach feature film length. Classics like 1965’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” 1996’s “How The Grinch Stole Christmas,” and even 2000’s “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” (it’s great, I promise) top out under an hour, making them super rewatchable but shorter than your typical movie. Unfortunately, there are also no Hanukkah, Yule, or Kwanzaa films listed here, as few have ever broken through to the mainstream in the United States. 

The Christmas-movie industrial complex is far from perfect, but it does offer pockets of cinematic joy, humor, and heart to keep us warm during the coldest months. Here are ten movies you won’t regret returning to before Santa comes this year.

Holiday season rom-coms are a cottage industry these days, but how many of them are actually good? The Hallmark Channel has cornered the market on cheesy Christmas romance, and has been successful enough to inspire Paramount+, Netflix, and other streamers to start pumping out corny-cute winter love stories of their own. But one of the best Christmas-set rom-coms entered the holiday canon years before the rise of streaming: the high-concept 2006 Nancy Meyers romance “The Holiday.”

The film has a premise that only Meyers could pull off: fed up by their current situations and heartsick over dual breakups, Iris (Kate Winslet) and Amanda (Cameron Diaz) impulsively decide to swap houses for two weeks. The temporary reprieve from their own lives proves good for both women, but things get complicated when they each make connections with men they meet along the way, played by Jude Law and Jack Black. “The Holiday” is a who’s-who of aughts celebrities, including some who successfully stretch their drama and romance chops more than usual. It’s also a beautifully complex story about the trickiness of love and companionship, all set against a picture-perfect December background. If you’re looking for a more mature antidote to the by-the-book Christmas rom coms being mass produced these days, look no further than “The Holiday.”

No matter how bad your holiday family time goes, at least it wasn’t as bad as the Griswolds’. “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” the third in the series of farcical comedy films based on a John Hughes story, is often invoked as a worst-case scenario: a reminder of all the things that haven’t gone wrong this holiday season. The funny (if dated) comedy takes a near-Looney Tunes-style approach to its chaotic Christmas vacation, filling frames with too-big Christmas trees, electrified cats, and Chevy Chase’s perpetually overconfident facial expressions.

“Christmas Vacation” is the most rewatchable of the Griswold-centric movies, and it builds a sort of cinematic Rube Goldberg machine in which each small thing that goes wrong leads to a bigger, funnier disaster. By the time a SWAT team has been called and Santa’s sleigh has gone down in flames, the film’s absurdity has begun to feel a bit like an art form. During a season that’s difficult for so many, it’s a wacky, ridiculous comfort above all else.

Debates about whether or not “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie have raged on for so long by now that the point is pretty much moot. It’s become a holiday season favorite — appropriate or not — simply because a lot of people now watch it at Christmas. Like other holiday-set action flicks (see: 2022’s “Violent Night”), “Die Hard” is a refreshing change of pace for anyone who has a low tolerance for the more sentimental old standards of the season.

Bruce Willis’ John McClane is considered an all-time-great action hero, while the late Alan Rickman gives a pitch-perfect performance as the wonderfully named villain Hans Gruber. “Die Hard” spawned several sequels, inspired plenty of fictional characters (like Jake Peralta, the lead cop and “Die Hard” fanatic in the sitcom “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”). Retrospectives by The AV Club and other sites have noted that it brought the ultra-buff action heroes of the ’80s down to earth, exchanging the familiar bodybuilding strongmen of the decade for surprisingly capable everymen. To quote a dead guy’s sweatshirt: Ho-ho-ho!

There’s plenty of great holiday horror to choose from at this time of year, from “Krampus” to “Anna and the Apocalypse” to “Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale.” But the most rewatchable Christmas genre film of all has got to be “Gremlins,” Joe Dante’s delightful 1984 romp about a family working to exterminate the Furby-like mogwai — gremlins that threaten to ruin Christmas Eve.

“Gremlins” is a classic Amblin Entertainment feature, filled with the heart, humor, and the kind-of-scary-but-not-really horror that can be enjoyed by adults and older kids alike. You can see ripples of the film’s influence in everything from “Stranger Things” to “Attack The Block,” but the original still holds up thanks to Dante’s signature style and its blend of black comedy and well-constructed horror scenes. It also features some fun franchise “rules” — and the kind of creatively traumatizing Santa Claus story that urban legends are made of.

Love it or hate it, Bob Clark’s 1983 film “A Christmas Story” is pretty much unavoidable around the holidays. A few cable channels have been known to air it in a 24-hour marathon in December, and it won over new fans in the ’90s with strategically placed Thanksgiving weekend airings. With its “Wonder Years”-style narration and focus on the silly moments of excitement and disappointment that stick with kids for a lifetime, “A Christmas Story” became a nostalgic favorite and a Christmas necessity for many households.

Peter Billingsley’s Ralphie is the boy through whom we see the Parker family’s love and dysfunction, and the actor reprised his role for the 2022 sequel “A Christmas Story Christmas.” That film hasn’t earned the same cult classic status as its predecessor yet, but the original “Christmas Story” has enough memorable moments for the both of them. The bunny suit, the flagpole lick, the leg lamp, and “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid!” have all become enduring and inescapable pop culture references — not just at Christmastime, but all the time.

“Elf” is a litmus test for how much earnestness we’ll allow into our life during the holiday season, and it has successfully melted the hearts of millions of fans since its release in 2003. Will Ferrell was entering the prime of his career when he starred in the movie, playing a human adoptee of Santa’s elves. America was high off his “Saturday Night Live” successes but hadn’t yet experienced movies like “Anchorman” or “Talladega Nights.” We were poised for a Will Ferrell Renaissance, and we got one in the form of one of the sweetest, funniest, and silliest holiday movies ever made.

These days, the cheer-filled hit has been translated into a musical and a stop-motion special (though, mercifully, no sequel is in the works), but “Elf” was a surprise blockbuster and critical success at the time of its release. Ferrell plays Buddy, who ended up at the North Pole as a baby and, now grown, heads to New York City to find his bio-dad. While plenty of movies vaguely gesture towards some type of commentary on the ways capitalism, modern life, and adult responsibilities dull the Christmas spirit, “Elf” follows through by making its protagonist a deeply naive sweetie pie who expects endless magic from the world. It also helps to have a supporting cast including Bob Newhart, James Caan, Mary Steenburgen, and Zooey Deschanel. By the film’s end, it’s hard not to see the world through Buddy’s child-like eyes, and to believe in the endurance and power, even now, of holiday cheer.

Like “A Christmas Story,” “Love Actually” may not be a great Christmas movie so much as a Christmas movie that’s around so often that you may as well just give into it. Richard Curtis’ 2003 ensemble dramedy is packed with plots ranging from the great to the decent to the highly controversial. Its big, bold swings and bizarre writing choices make “Love Actually” an endlessly fascinating conversation piece, whether you’re arguing about the effectiveness of its porn star subplot, groaning over the infidelities of Alan Rickman’s Harry, or screaming into a pillow about how everyone called Downing Street staffer Natalie (Martine McCutcheon) fat.

“Love, Actually” is an overstuffed movie that inspired dozens of imitators. It has questionable gender politics (let’s not get started on the Peter, Mark, and Juliet love triangle), underwritten storylines, and always-jarring references to 9/11. Yet the movie asks us to suspend our disbelief and scorn so many times that eventually we do, and when you sit back and enjoy the ride, “Love Actually” has plenty of memorable and highly rewatchable moments. For every character who gets an unfair or underdeveloped arc, there’s something indelible like Hugh Grant’s dancing PM, Thomas Brodie-Sangster’s wholesome kid crush, or Bill Nighy’s swaggering, aging rock star to consider. For better and worse, “Love Actually” is a whole lot of movie — and a Christmastime staple.

Nothing kicks the Christmas season into high gear quite like a “Home Alone” rewatch. The 1990 original, produced by John Hughes and directed by Chris Columbus, may have the edge as a more widely recognized classic, but its sequel film, “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” is a stealth heartwarmer that makes great use of its New York setting. Ideally, both movies should be on one’s holiday season watchlist (let’s pretend any “Home Alone” movies made post-1992 don’t exist), but if you want to pack a whole lot of holiday hijinks into two hours, you can’t go wrong with the sequel.

Macaulay Culkin stars as fourth-wall-breaking troublemaker Kevin McCallister, who is chronically left behind whenever his big family attempts to take a holiday vacation. As in the first film, “Lost in New York” focuses largely on Kevin’s inexplicable ability to K.O. the Sticky Bandits (formerly known as the Wet Bandits), a pair of opportunistic thieves played by Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. But while the original film stays close to the McCallister home, the sequel makes all of New York City Kevin’s playground, showing off the winter wonderland hidden in the concrete jungle. Swanky hotels, decked-out toy shops, and the Rockefeller Christmas Tree all make an appearance. When it comes right down to it, though, the film gets much of its warmth from its most underestimated character: Brenda Fricker’s eleventh-hour hero, Pigeon Lady.

If one great Christmas film has been canonized more than any other in recent years, it might be “The Muppet Christmas Carol.” The Muppets movie made back its budget at the box office when it was released in 1992 after narrowly avoiding a TV movie release, but it didn’t exactly take over the world like “Home Alone,” “Elf,” and others on this list. In the decades since its release, though, Brian Henson’s take on Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” has been embraced as the stone-cold classic that it is. The movie’s perfect recipe is one part Michael Caine (famously giving his all to a performance that could’ve easily been cutesy or condescending), one part holiday magic, and several parts adorable, snarky, and scene-stealing puppets.

On the surface, the first Muppets film released after original creator Jim Henson’s death is a surprisingly straightforward literary adaptation, but it’s the minor tweaks that make it extra-lovable. Rizzo and Gonzo’s Dickens narrating, Statler and Waldorf as the heckler ghosts of the Morleys, wonderful original music, and the cutest Tiny Tim ever put on screen are just a few of the puppet additions at the fuzzy heart of “The Muppets Christmas Carol.” It’s the quintessential Christmas watch: touching, timeless, and entertaining for family members from age 1 to 99.

There’s a reason “It’s A Wonderful Life” is often called the best Christmas movie of all time. Frank Capra’s 1946 beauty can melt the ice in almost anyone’s heart, and its plot about a man on the brink of suicide speaks carefully to anyone who feels more broken around the holiday season. Some modern viewers opt out of watching “It’s A Wonderful Life” because it’s older than the kind of movies they’re used to, but the film’s black and white cinematography disguises a truly timeless story about the tough practice it takes to recognize joy and be at peace with your choices.

Based loosely on Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” “It’s A Wonderful Life” never simplifies its second-chance premise with a pat, “just be thankful” message. James Stewart’s George Bailey works through every angle of his own possible demise, revisiting pivotal moments in his life and getting a glimpse into what the world might look like without him, before he finally decides to stick around on Earth for a while. Everything about “It’s A Wonderful Life” feels like a movie miracle, from its striking direction to its class commentary to its honest, expansive, and hopeful take on human pain and purpose.