The best Christmas movies of all time, updated for 2025

Time Out Film Blog ^ | Updated in October, 2025 | Time Out Staff

[Diana in Wisconsin]

It’s easy to be a Scrooge about Christmas movies, especially these days. Streaming platforms have shamelessly muscled into the Hallmark market, churning out quick, cheap holiday romcoms with C-list casts every year, hoping to land on something so irresistibly cheesy it briefly becomes a seasonal phenomenon. Put that cynicism aside, however, and most of us can admit that we all have at least one movie we return to every December – the one that allows us to embrace nostalgia unapologetically and lets us know that the most wonderful time of the year has arrived.

It doesn’t have to be schmaltzy and saccharine, either. Maybe it’s a golden era classic like It’s a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street. Maybe it’s something more modern and goofy, like Elf or Home Alone. Maybe it’s raunchy and rude, like Bad Santa or Christmas Vacation, or just plain dark, like Black Christmas. That full range of yuletide cheer can be found on this list of the best holiday movies ever made. No matter what kind of Christmas movie you prefer, you’ll find one that warms your core like a cup of hot cocoa.

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TOPICS: Arts/Photography; Books/Literature; Conspiracy; Music/Entertainment
KEYWORDS: christmas; christmasmovies; hollywood; jesus; magic; movies; santa

[dfwgator]

[rlmorel]

On the serious side, these are the Christmas Movies I watch every year:

1. Silent Night
   This is not a well known movie, but I love it. It is based on a true story about a Belgian woman and her young son who go to her family hunting cabin in the Ardennes in December 1944 so that her son will not be forced to join the Hitler Youth and eventually the German Army. While there, she ends up involuntarily hosting an American patrol, and while there, a German patrol arrives on the scene. They end up spending Christmas Eve together and putting the war out of the picture for the night. In the morning, they part ways without fighting. It is a bit overacted but the story is largely true, especially where the mother and son, and one of the German soldiers became lifelong friends. I love it.
   
   
2. Miracle on 34th Street
   Worth watching if only just for the remarkable guy who plays Kris Kringle. The young Natalie Wood is well played, and the cameos by the owners of the big department stores in New York are fun to see.
   
   
3. White Christmas
   I had never watched this movie until late in life, when my Sister in Law gave my wife and I a boxed set of "White Christmas" with various materials in it, posters, actors pictures, etc. So I finally watched it. There are people who cannot stand this movie, and I kind of get it. It is tacky and schmaltzy to many. But I am a sucker for Christmas movies set in WWII, and lets face it, the song "White Christmas" made more guys want want to kill themselves due to homesickness, probably closely followed by "I'll Be Home For Christmas". Or the other way around. I get that. The guy who played the General, Dean Jagger really resonated with me. He played that part well. I have never been a big Bing Crosby fan, but I grew to enjoy Rosemary Clooney's music, and it was fun to see her in an acting role. But I think I like it the most because I never really watched much with Danny Kaye, and I was very impressed with him. He was incredibly talented, and even though I had seen him in a variety of things, never paid much attention to him. I found him to be brilliant.
   
   
4. It's A Wonderful Life
   I have always been a huge fan of almost everyone in that movie, including Jimmy Stewart. I love the concept. What if you had never been born? What would things have turned out like? I am a sucker for anything like that. A lot of people look at it as some kind of socialistic banner with references to rich people and greedy bankers, with an ending where we all pitch in and help those in need, blah blah blah. But I never dwelled much on those things.
   
   
5. A Christmas Carol(1938 version)
   Love this one. I have a lot of childhood memories of this, and none of the newer versions ever seemed to measure up, and I have watched most of them. There is something specific about this one that transports me back to being in my pajamas while my mother cooked her special Italian Cookes with the iron dipped into the batter then placed in a pan of hot fat until they were crispy and golden. The smell would fill the house, and she drained them on paper towels, running powdered sugar over them lightly with a sifter. She always let us have some. The Tree would have the smell of balsam fir, heated up with the non-LED lights back in those days, and the leaden tinsel had a look the plastic stuff could never match. That was Christmas.
   
   
6. A Charlie Brown Christmas
   We all loved Peanuts as kids. I grew bored with this. But later in life, as music awoke in me, I realized just how much I loved the spectacular music of The Vince Guaraldi Trio. Remarkable. It brings me right back. But it was the lore around that move that made me appreciate it, and someone pointed out something on this very forum just a few days ago regarding the religious aspect that Charles Shultz insisted be kept in the cartoon. When Linus began his on stage soliloquy of the story of Christmas from the Bible, having them put a spotlight on him with the words "Fear Not", he dropped his blanket. I never noticed that. In my current journey to find Christ, when someone pointed that out, it very nearly brought tears to my eyes. But, the music. Oh, that music. That brings it all right back.
   
   
7. Trading Places
   There are so many cultural references in this movie that I use humorously in every day life, but the thought of Dan Akroyd in a Santa suit, eating what appears to be an entire smoked salmon through his fake beard...well, I will never get that image out of my head!
   
   
8. DieHard
   As the image up-thread indicates...it has a place all of its own.
   
   
9. A Christmas Story
   There is absolutely something so middle-class about this movie, everything surrounding Christmas, the pageantry in the stores, the lights, the fantasizing about various toys you might get, nearly to the point of obsession where there is no chance you will ever fall asleep on Christmas Eve...but you do. And the carnage, opening the gifts...
   
   
10. Love Actually
    This one is a guilty pleasure. I hate to admit I like it, there are so many Leftist dweebs in it and Leftist woke themes that I feel terrible for liking it, but...I do. I apologize to everyone. I even like Hugh Grant's character, which is most definitely some kind of weird conception of what a British Prime minister would be if there was a cross between Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. I feel terrible for finding it fun. Mea Culpa. Mea Culpa. Mea Culpa.

There is one additional thing about Christmas that I do every year, but it isn't a movie. It is a short story by Frederick Forsyth called "The Shepherd" that I read every single year on Christmas Eve.

I can usually get through it in an hour or so.

It is about a Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot flying home in a for Christmas in 1957 (late at night on Christmas Eve) from a British airbase in Germany in his de Havilland Vampire fighter, a single-engine jet which due to its unusual design, is nearly impossible to bail out of and has no ejection seats. He has an electrical malfunction which results in a near total instrument failure over the North Sea with the land blotted out by clouds. He has no radio, he cannot land, he cannot bail out, and he cannot contact anyone to help him. He is running low on fuel, and his only option is to try to bail out over the freezing water with nobody to come and get him, because he can't risk his disabled fighter landing on a house of civilians on the land. In his desperation, a mysterious, vintage WWII-era Mosquito fighter-bomber appears out of the fog, a "Shepherd" to guide him by flying on his wingtip to the nearest airfield.

For any aviation enthusiast, it is a gripping and wonderful read.

[dfwgator]

Perry Como - Still Alive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqwHMiJdIqU

[EvilCapitalist]

Of course. But it has the be the black and white version. It’s just not the same in color.

[rlmorel]

Hahahahahaha! As you can see above, that is on my list!!!!

Yep. It is one of the greats!

[pnz1]

Christmas with the Kranks is a good one

[rlmorel]

OMG! Did she ever forgive you????? (I know Billy Bob Thornton is a Leftist dweeb, but...I can’t help but like him!)

[wally_bert]

SCTV was really good comedy.

In many ways better than SNL.

[dfwgator]

Gremlins has to be on the list.

[rlmorel]

I know! Every bad thing about every weaselly Main Stream Media reporter seems to get rolled up in that one guy, and when he gets socked, we all cheer!!!

[dfwgator]

I had a big crush on Bonnie Bedelia back in the day.

[rlmorel]

I am going to watch it....thank you for the recommendation. I am on my way to finding Christ, and I am not put off by things that are overtly Christian. Thank you, and...Merry Christmas!

[rlmorel]

Ahhhhahahahahaha! I have never seen those-I would buy one, hands down!

[HereInTheHeartland]

Scrooge the George C Scott version, White Christmas , it’s A Wonderful Life.

[DAC21]

Christmas Vacation is way to low.

I have this one along with, It’s a Wonderful life and a Christmas Story all coming tomorrow on 4K UHD Blue-ray. Hopefully they cleaned up well on the remastering.

[DoodleBob]

Sure, but not number 1.

TP is a zillion times better than DH.

Killing Hans Gruber was the easy way out.

Rendering Duke & Duke bankrupt and ruined…now THAT is justice.

It’s enough to make Santa laugh.

[Yogafist]

If the Claymation Christmas Special isn’t in the list, it’s not a serious list.

[rlmorel]

Hehehe...we all get those harmless “crushes” on actresses!

My wife tortured me for years about my crush on Sandra Bullock (she would say in the most teasing, high-pitched feminine voice: “This movie has Sandra Bullock in it...do you want to go SEE it?” and then I moved on to Scarlett Johansson...:)

Just today, I told her that I thought Jane Seymour was probably the most beautiful woman who ever walked the face of the Earth...except for her, of course! (She did smirk and roll her eyes at me)

[abb]

This.

[DoodleBob]

In all honesty, Trading Places is an outstanding movie.

It works on so many different levels. Comedy, drama, morality play…indeed, to some extent, I could argue that Winthorpe and Valentine are the first Deplorables, and Duke & Duke are the current Democrat party.

Die Hard is (just) an action film. But it’s a good one, and it works in that box.

Merry Christmas.