The Best Holiday Movies To Watch This Season

The best part of the holiday season is watching holiday movies with cups of hot cocoa and letting the nostalgia set in. I love to whip out my DVDs of the holiday classics and vintage movies I grew up with. Also AMC plays A Christmas Story for 24 hours on Christmas Day, so that’s an easy choice.

We are actually seeing It’s a Wonderful Life play here in Vancouver tonight at the Arts Club Theatre. Has anyone seen this yet?

Every season though, they bring out new films, some are ok, but the ones I’m listing below I feel are classics. Got to love those 80s and 90s films right? I think I watched Home Alone way too many times, same with the Grinch and Christmas Vacation.

The Best Holiday Movies To Watch This Season

Classics You Grew Up With:

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation: One of the best films of this series, it actually depicts a nightmarish Christmas.

Planes, Trains & Automobiles: Hilarious, frustrating, full of near-death experiences—this is everything a good holiday movie should be!

Home Alone: A 1990s dream house decked out for the holidays, a child they left behind (great parenting) and robbers. Classic.

Uncle Buck: Loved this film, he was cringe worthy, lovable and frustrating to watch.

A Charlie Brown Christmas: Classic. Enough said.

A Christmas Story: You’ll shoot your eye out! We watch this film every Christmas morning since I can remember.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas: I personally love both of the versions, the classic and the one with Jim Carey called Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

The Nightmare before Christmas: A tale about Halloweeners that decide to celebrate Christmas Tim Burton style. And come on, Tim Burton!

Newer, Bound-To-Be Classics:

Elf: So much happiness packed into one film! Will Ferrell as an elf in NYC, eat cotton balls and singing Christmas songs. I fell in love instantly. With the film!

Love Actually: “To me, you are perfect.” Uhhh, so is this movie. Just watch it. It’s seriously hard to turn off and super sappy.

The Holiday: While it leaves a little to be desired in terms of substance and acting, it makes up for it with gorgeous architectural eye candy.

The Family Stone: Similar to a cheesy Lifetime movie, but with a really great cast of actors.

Vintage Classics:

White Christmas: When making movies was considered making magic.

Miracle on 34th Street: A lawyer defends Santa Clause and a little girl gets the house of her dreams. They remade this in the 90s too, which wasn’t a bad version either.

It’s a Wonderful Life: Classic Christmas movie—is there anyone who hasn’t seen it? If you haven’t yet, don’t bother with the colored version; just watch the original in black and white and get ready to cry.

The Shop Around the Corner: You might recognize this storyline, as it was remade into You’ve Got Mail with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

Holiday Inn: Composed by Irving Berlin, starring Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, and Majorie Reynolds.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Santa’s Claus is Comin’ to Town, The Year Without a Santa Claus and Frosty the Snowman: The Rankin & Bass TV specials are animated shorts that have burned images of carol characters into our collective consciousness.

Babes in Toyland: The late Annette Funicello stars in the Babes remake, that feels more like a rehearsal for Mary Poppins or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Still love it though.

An honourable mention for Curtis, since he believes that these should be on the list, is Die Hard and Merry Christmas Mr. Bean.