The 50 best Christmas movies of all time

Tinged with magical passages, buckets of good will and an alternate plotline with the disturbing kick of a Black Mirror episode, this tribute to the efforts of a small-town do-gooder (James Stewart, in his most beloved role) cements the idea of Christmas as a time for giving.

It’s up there with ‘Is a hot dog a sandwich?’ and ‘Is cereal a soup?’ as one of those goofy online debates that’s so played out your eyes cross whenever it heats up again, so let’s just put it to bed right now: yes, Die Hard is a Christmas movie. C’mon: it takes place on Christmas Eve. Run-DMC’s immortal ‘Christmas in Hollis’ is on the soundtrack. Some have even argued that it’s secretly a remake of It’s a Wonderful Life. Look, you can and should watch John McTiernan’s action classic year-round – but for our money, ringing in the season with the sound of machine-gun fire, C4 explosions and Alan Rickman’s accent sure beats the heck out of sleigh bells.

Plenty of Christmas presents come with instructions, yet none are as ominous as the following: Never expose to bright light, never add water and, crucially, never feed after midnight. Joe Dante’s horror-comedy turns a well-intentioned gift into a nightmare. Meanwhile, a traumatised Phoebe Cates tells the saddest Christmas story ever.

Will Ferrell’s overgrown-child persona hilariously complements this comedy about a guileless giant elf searching for his dad in NYC, but the film’s focus isn’t just on the funny bone. There’s an abundance of heart and soul in the way the story cherishes holiday cheer; in a genre that’s become generically saccharine, this is one modern Christmas movie that’s genuinely sweet.

Admittedly, this yuletide raunch-fest subsists on a single joke, and it’s basically ‘guy in a Santa suit swears a lot’. But Billy Bob Thornton, in the title role, manages to stretch that premise much further than it should go, and also generates some genuine Christmas warmth through his unlikely friendship with a bullied kid unfortunately named Thurman Merman. 

John Hughes penned this rollicking holiday classic that essentially plays like Straw Dogs for children. No matter that everybody’s on the naughty list here, from Catherine O’Hara’s woefully neglectful mom to Macaulay Culkin’s sadistic moppet and Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci’s vindictive crooks. Once the John Williams score kicks in, even the coldest hearts will warm and the most life-altering concussions will heal. 

One of the first Johnny Depp performances to suggest he was more than just a set of cheekbones, the actor’s gothed-out title character is a study in pain and pathos. Tim Burton’s suburban fantasy wouldn’t be nearly as touching without Depp’s sad-eyed hero at its center – or its context of Christmas, a time of acceptance, charity and Winona Ryder dancing around ice sculptures.

Raymond Briggs’s book came to life once a year throughout many childhoods, as the animated film was shown on British TV with religious precision. Nominated for an Oscar, the short film tells of a boy whose snowman magically becomes real – but not forever. Add the haunting song ‘Walking In The Air’ and you have a true Christmas classic.

Small-time crook Robert Downey Jr hits Hollywood in this witty crime comedy featuring a memorable turn from Val Kilmer as a private investigator hired to give the wannabe actor background for a role. There are as many complications as belly laughs, while Michelle Monaghan puts in a break-out turn in a sexy Santa costume.

By now as iconic as the story of Kris Kringle himself, this Peanuts-based perennial sends viewers into happy spasms of neck-tipped dancing year after year. Its most lasting achievement is Vince Guaraldi’s breezy jazz score – whimsical and lovely like a falling snowflake.

Tim Burton’s second stab at the Caped Crusader is actually a slight improvement on his original 1989 blockbuster, mainly due to Michelle Pfeiffer’s uncommonly fierce performance as Catwoman (the finest work she’s ever done). If you forget, Gotham is dusted with a layer of snow and in the process of crowing its Ice Princess. It doesn’t go well for the beauty queen, or anyone, really, in this especially downbeat Christmas.

Bill Murray excels at portraying smug, sarcastic cranks, so if nothing else, casting him as the Scrooge figure in this modern-day satire of A Christmas Carol was a stroke of genius. Predating his turn as grouchy weatherman Phil Connors in Groundhog Day, here Murray is a callous TV exec named Frank Cross whom the universe decides to teach a lesson in merriment and goodwill toward men. And he’s not the only inspired casting choice – see also Carol Kane as the unexpectedly violent Ghost of Christmas Present and New York Dolls’ David Johansen as the cab-driving Ghost of Christmas Past.

Singing, dancing, over-emoting on Christmas, whatever: When those eight women happen to be Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Isabelle Huppert, Emmanuelle Béart, Virginie Ledoyen, Firmine Richard, Fanny Ardant and Ludivine Sagnier, they’re welcome to do whatever they damn well please.

It might be better known these days for SNL’s classic ‘Lazy Sunday’ skit (‘Pass the chronic – what? – cles of Narnia’), but this snowy Christmas treat based on C.S. Lewis’s novel is, indeed, a dreamworld of magic. There’s both a Father Christmas and a White Witch, the latter played by Tilda Swinton.

The ultimate in cuddly Christmas afternoon movies, this original stars Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle, who must prove he is in fact Santa Claus – not least to a young girl (Natalie Wood) who has lost the true meaning of Christmas.

Martin McDonagh’s breakthrough as a writer and director, about two mismatched hitmen (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) are forced to spend the holidays hiding out in a Belgian tourist town after a hit gone wrong, is sad and hilarious in equal measure. If you like your Christmas movies foul-mouthed and melancholy, this dark crime comedy is for you.

This festive masterpiece by German-expat genius Ernst Lubitsch about the struggles of a coterie of neurotic, underpaid, underloved department store clerks is an immaculate conflation of his sprightly shooting style, expertly layered wisecracking and bracing realism, all topped off with a romantic subplot that offers a nakedly joyous celebration of young, serendipitous love. 

It’s already become a Christmas classic for especially forward-thinking families. Working for the first time with material developed by another screenwriter, director Todd Haynes transforms an underappreciated 1952 Patricia Highsmith novel about secret lesbian love into a universal romance. Once you’ve seen Rooney Mara in a Santa hat, there’s no turning back.

Michael Caine as Scrooge, Gonzo the Great as Charles Dickens, Kermit the Frog as Bob Cratchit – just three of many reasons to love this witty, warm-hearted take on the immortal story. Despite the presence of Muppets, it is (believe it or not) one of the more faithful versions of the book.

There’s something incredibly lovely about first-rate stop-motion work, and this gorgeous musical about a botched Halloween-Christmas merger ranks up there with the old Rankin/Bass Xmas toons. Who else but Tim Burton, the project’s patron producer, could have come up with such appealingly macabre mayhem?

Hideous Christmas jumpers weren’t always considered cool like they are today. So we can’t blame our protagonist Bridget Jones’s (Renée Zellweger) less than pleasant reaction when she sees her potential love interest, Mark Darcy (a wonderfully stuffy Colin Firth), wearing a sweater with a giant reindeer face on it. It does, however, kick off this sharp romantic comedy-drama about navigating twenty-first-century dating and the pitfalls of having an affair with a caddish, dashing Hugh Grant.

Nora Ephron’s remake of The Shop Around the Corner is a fairytale about warring booksellers is both a dreamy ode to New York’s Upper West Side as it is to the power of love. The melancholic Christmas scenes set to Harry Nilsson's ‘Remember’ will make you want to go out ice skating or gift a bunch of children’s books, while the chemistry between Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks transforms a cheesy into a classic. 

If you’re keen to learn the harsh realities of the global economy but can’t be bothered to trawl through a textbook, this comic satire should do the trick. Eddie Murphy is the streetwise hustler who switches lives with Dan Aykroyd’s preening Wall Street moneybags, only to find himself the victim of a cruel joke played by a pair of vicious aristocrats. 

It’s Christmas every day for Arthur, son of Sant. Sarah Smith’s humorous animation sees the clumsy kid leaving the North Pole on a mission, complete with reindeer and comedy elves. James McAvoy and Jim Broadbent provide voices.

This early version of Charles Dickens’s much-told story remains one of the finest, with Reginald Owen as Ebenezer Scrooge and Gene Lockhart as Bob Cratchit. There’s something oddly comforting about watching snow fall in black and white.

This musical is the ultimate ’40s cheerer as Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby sing and dance their way into the ladies’ hearts. The set up is pure Broadway: they’re a musical troupe who only perform on holidays, from Easter to Christmas. The film scored an Oscar for the now iconic song ‘White Christmas’.

‘How could the same shit happen to the same guy twice?’ Sure, it’s bigger, pricier and more bloated than the one that came before it – but that’s what Christmas is all about! Once again, Bruce takes down a terror gang to the tune of twinkly seasonal carols, this time in an airport.

Sandra Bullock is at her most loveable in this smart, thoughtful romcom about a lonely Chicago subway worker who rescues the man of her dreams from an oncoming train only to fall in love with his bad-tempered brother. Witty, sweet and festive – if a little stalker-y – it’s the kind of movie Hollywood has always excelled at.

Before Silent Night, Deadly Night, there was another horror movie about a psychopath donning a Santa costume and going on a killing spree. This is that movie. John Waters is such a megafan, he even recorded a feature-length commentary for the movie’s Blu-ray re-release in 2014.

At a glance, this Nick Hornby adaptation sounds as saccharine as Love Actually, and even shares a plot point: Hugh Grant is a louche playboy living off the money his late songwriter father made off a novelty Christmas single who eventually he learns the value of love and family through his friendship with a young boy (Nicholas Hoult). Slough it off at your peril, though – it’s sharp, spiky, funny and full of genuine heart.

‘Have yourself a merry little Christmas,’ sang Judy Garland in this cockle-warming musical set against the backdrop of the 1904 World Fair. The breakout song wasn’t originally so cheery, but Garland and her co-stars objected to the cynical tone in lyrics such as: ‘Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It may be your last / Next year we may all be living in the past.’ Cheery.

Bad Santa is raunchier, but Christmas Vacation is possibly the most madcap Christmas comedy ever. The title is a bit of a misnomer, though: in this instalment of the Vacation franchise, the Griswold clan opts to stay at home in suburban Chicago for the holidays. But that doesn’t mean Chevy Chase, as overly ambitious patriarch Clark Griswold, can’t find a way to snatch disaster from the jaws of tranquillity. Several ways, in fact. 

Laurel and Hardy go family-friendly in this fairytale mash-up featuring characters from the stories of Mother Goose, Little Bo Peep and others. The duo play the Toymaker’s Apprentices in this slapstick heartwarmer, which was a Christmas TV favourite throughout the ’60s and ’70s. Just be wary of the horrifying 1986 version starring young Keanu Reeves and Drew Barrymore. 

This Oscar-nominated Disney short film casts Mickey as Bob Cratchit and Scrooge McDuck as his selfish boss, while Goofy, Jiminy Cricket and other familiar characters morph into the various ghosts. A nifty blending of Disney favourites with the Dickens classic.

Seething with long-held resentments, an extended French family gathers for the holiday and, as the booze starts to flow, out come the knives. Don’t expect figgy pudding and sentiment: Director Arnaud Desplechin is more interested in open wounds. Paradoxically, this is a great film to watch with your clan, who are undoubtedly in a better place.

Christmas may have been white, but this time Irving Berlin’s musical was in Technicolor. Inspired by Holiday Inn, this follow-up could not be more Christmassy if it tried (and try it probably did). Snow, shows and romance all added up to a massive festive box office hit that would run and run on TV. When Clark Griswold famously promised the ‘hap-hap-happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny (expletive deleted) Kaye,’ he was talking about this gloriously old-fashioned musical 

This oddball origin story of Santa is the first animated feature from Netflix, and it's a doozy. Featuring Oscar winner JK Simmons as a grizzled proto-Fat Man who loves toymaking but isn't interested in children, Jason Schwartzman as an incompetent postal carrier and Rashida Jones as a cynical teacher, the film’s eye-popping art direction scored the streamer a Best Animated Feature nomination. And if the set-up sounds cynical, worry not: Icy hearts melt, fast.

The closest any horror-comedy has gotten to the yuletide mania of Gremlins, Mike Dougherty’s Krampus pits a squabbling family led by Toni Collette and Adam Scott against the Scandinavian anti-Santa: A deranged goat-like demon who devours kids (and adults) on the naughty list. And while it doesn’t reach the derange heights of Joe Dante’s classic, it does include a particularly toothy killer clown sure to keep the kiddies awake well into Christmas morning. 

Scandinavia does Christmas a little differently, what with all the demons running about devouring the naughty. This overlooked horror-comedy finds a lovably Amblinesque group of kids and misfits unearthing a massive ancient monster… and an army of feral, marauding Fathers Christmas. It’s a worthy successor to Gremlins, minus the slime and with much, much more full-frontal elderly nudity. Yet for all the horrific imagery and snarling Santas, it’s a wildly inventive, even heartwarming affair from the Finnish wilderness. 

All hail Shane Black, the king of the fast-quipping buddy comedy-thriller, and a man who seems incapable of writing a screenplay without somehow involving Christmas. We’ll meet him again later in our list, but this is where it all started: with two bickering cops on a mission to take down drug dealers. At Christmas.

It’s never easy going to someone else’s home for the holidays, especially when their family is abnormally close and unbearably kooky. In this fluffily entertaining dramedy, Sarah Jessica Parker is the girlfriend meeting her partner’s parents and siblings for the first time. Initially uptight and anxious, she grows more sympathetic the more you learn about the situation she’s been thrust into. Despite the Hallmark-y plotting, the movie contains some sharp observations about family dynamics and charming performances from Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams and Diane Keaton.

The film that single handedly turned Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas is You’ into a cultural juggernaut, Richard Curtis’s sprawling London ensemble piece is so sticky sweet that it’s easy to forget that each bit of holiday cheer is counterbalanced with characters destined for the naughty list. From Alan Rickman’s philandering editor to Hugh Grant’s assistant-seducing Prime Minister and Andrew Lincoln’s borderline stalker, most vignettes balance the sugar with some truly bitter spice. No matter. Like Bill Nighy’s ageing rocker says: Christmas is all around it. And it takes a bit of naughtiness to make the nice shine through anyway. 

Bob Clark’s other Christmas story might not get played on an endless loop on cable every December, but it did basically invent the modern slasher four whole years before that other holiday-themed thriller got all the credit for it. A group of college girls stay behind at the sorority house over winter break and find themselves stalked by an unseen killer – it doesn’t sound like much, but that’s only because decades of copycats turned its plot points into clichés. Trust us: it’s still genuinely unnerving.

Loved for her columns about her wholesome husband and family in Connecticut, Elizabeth (Barbara Stanwyck) is actually a single New Yorker. When asked to host a Christmas dinner by her boss, she must head to Connecticut and keep up the pretence. Romantic complications follow.

Robert Zemeckis sprinkled his family-friendly magic on this performance-capture animation starring Tom Hanks in multiple roles, including narrator, train conductor and Santa Claus. This one ticks a lot of boxes for Christmas fanatics, including reindeer, elves and a whole heap of snow. Zemeckis would later revisit the uncanny valley of the holidays with the Jim Carrey-starring Disney’s a Christmas Carol, but for our money this first crack at mo-cap holiday cheer is the perfect holiday heartwarmer.

Everything about this Christmas movie in which Jude Law romances Cameron Diaz in a cutesy country cottage shouldn’t work. And yet there’s something deeply charming about this festive romantic comedy. Perhaps it’s because we’ve been bullied into submission by numerous viewings; or perhaps it’s the secondary LA-set plot, which features Kate Winslet on peak form as a scorned British reporter who flirts with Jack Black and befriends a forgotten but famous screenwriter from the Golden Age of Hollywood (played by the late Eli Wallach). Either way, like a tub of Quality Street, it’s irresistible.

Rankin and Bass’s stop-motion perennial drips with nostalgia, so much so that it’s easy to forget the cynical streak coursing through its short runtime: This is a North Pole where even Santa gets in on bullying Rudolph for his bright-red nose and a legion of elves displays a toxic amount of, um, dental-phobia toward a flamboyant would-be dentist. Throw in peppermint addict Yukon Cornelius, a whole island of misfit toys and a gnashing abominable snowman and it’s a wonder this hasn’t been revisited by Tim Burton. 

It could have been a Cronenbergian body-horror nightmare to stand alongside The Fly: Tim Allen, having accidentally caused the death of Santa, finds his body swelling and hair growing as he involuntarily becomes Santa’s successor. Yet this schmaltzy ‘90s kid classic is far from a reverse Thinner: It’s a warmhearted tale of an overworked dad rekindling his relationship with his family in the classic Disney mode – dead Santa notwithstanding. 

Christmas is a time for magic, and what could be more magical than Hogwarts? While some of the acting in the first of the Harry Potter adaptations leaves something to be desired, the genuine wonder of Harry and Ron at Christmas is enough to give you a frisson of festive excitement. Now, who's up for a game of Wizard’s Chess?