Ten Best Christmas Movies

​With Christmas just a few days away, I wanted to tell you thank you to all of you. For TWO YEARS this newsletter has been in production, and so many of you have been amazing in interacting with it. Putting up with my pontificating and ramblings has been the highlight of 2024 and 2025 for me.  
So, like last month, I wanted to give you my list of the top ten Christmas movies to watch with the family (some of them at least) this season. This list is the definable, undisputed list of Christmas films, and if you disagree, I will make sure you never get on Potluck or your name gets drawn out of the bucket at the Improv. 

Just a little FYI, I'm not a fan of A Christmas Story, and Christmas Vacation is a very comedy at times, but overall I just never liked the film as a film. I'm sure I'm wrong, but I don't know why yet. Oh, and Die Hard is the actual #2 but I don't want people mad at me putting it there, so just imagine it there. 

Top Ten Christmas Films

1. The Muppet Christmas Carol
This is the most joyful, wonderous, entertaining Christmas movie I've ever seen. It tells the most Christmas of stories, retelling Charles Dickens' classic ghost and time travel story from the point of view of the Muppets. Plus, Michael Caine was robbed of an Oscar nomination as Scrooge. Okay, maybe a Golden Globe nomination. But if you have a family member who hasn't seen it yet, stream it on Disney+ over the long weekend. 

2. Miracle on 34th Street 
Santa is real. I don't care what my dad told me at three years old. And this 1947 classic about Santa's visit to earth, only to be treated like an insane asylum member is both poignant and charming. The best part is when all the children write letters to Santa and a judge goes, "Little children need this man to keep this myth going!" Because in law school they teach you that defense. 

3. It's a Wonderful Life 
Remember that classic suicidal comedy fantasy about a guy who loses everyone's money and then an out of work angel tries to remind him that life is worth living because he's gonna get some great tail in life? Frank Capra is at his most Capra-ist and Jimmy Stewart does his best Jimmy Stewart impression as himself in this sweet as a candy cane love letter to small town America. 

4. A Charlie Brown Christmas         
If you have any atheist or non-Christian religious friends, Linus gives you the gospel to share with them in the best Bible reading Ted Talk ever drawn. Everything about this short animated classic is enduring. From the beautiful score to the wild group dancing, you will never not be entertained. Plus, the phallic Freudian impotent tree being erected must have made some animator giddy when drawing that scene of upright redemption.   

5. The Holdovers 
You know that weird relative no one wants to invite to Christmas dinner? Paul Giamatti plays him to a T in Alexander Payne's heartwarming film about the thee loneliest people in the world trapped in a boarding school on Christmas break. It is essentially three characters all coming to grip with their sad existential place in the universe, but with some big laughs and a great soundtrack. This is the most recent Christmas classic.  

6. Home Alone 
It's 1991 and you're in a movie theater watching a ten year old boy beat the living sh*t out of Oscar winner Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern. It's the greatest day of your life by far. Macaulay Culkin is the kid actor of his generation, and this dark fantasy that clearly stole it's third act from Nightmare on Elm Street (go watch Freddy's demise and see the shot by shot homage) still holds up thirty plus years later. 

7. Gremlins (Kept it green for obvious reasons)
Tiny green monsters take over a Frank Capra-esque town in Joe Dante and Chris Columbus's brilliant satire. It's still scary and dark in that classic 1980's way like ET and Poltergeist, but still family friendly. Plus you get to watch some GRADE A racial stereotyping in the old shopkeeper and a great collection of green slime everywhere. A perfect intro to horror films for your younger movie goer. 

8. Elf 
The Will Ferrell man-child persona was created in this whimsical winter wonderland fantasy about a grown man who thinks he's an elf. This one could have been overwrought Christmas cheer, but Peter Dinklage and James Caan give this a lot of much needed cynicism and serious counterplay, like Michael Caine did as Scrooge. I wasn't a fan the first time I saw this, but it won me over eventually. Clearly in 2003 I was going through some shizzz. 

9. The Nightmare Before Christmas 
When people tell me this is more of a Halloween film, I just have to pull out my Masters of English and go, "Christmas is in the title, you nimrods!" Tim Burton's vision is on full display here (he only produced, Henry Selick directed), and Disney objected to this film's final cut at first, but now, like good capitalists, turned this film into their whole personality at Disneyland between October through December. When Jack Skellington takes over for Santa, chaos erupts. That's all you need to know about this claymation masterpiece.               

​10. Bad Santa 
So I needed to put one "adult" comedy on this list, and Bad Santa is the perfect film for the raunchy side of Christmas. Billy Bob Thornton gave it his all as a mall Santa who robs the malls he works at in this Terry Zwigoff R-rated naughty list classic. The film reminds us that only sweet natured overweight nerds on the spectrum can melt the heart of a criminal. Plus, Thornton and Lauren Graham of Gilmore Girls fame have an actually funny romance in a film that is more Coen Brother than it has the right to be.