15 feel-good Christmas movies to watch, or rewatch, this holiday season

Christmas movies that become holiday favourites get much of their emotional power from their ability to tap into emotions that date back to childhood. As much as the films themselves, it is often the associations of watching them over the years, sometimes alone and sometimes with family and friends, that make them an indispensable part of the season. And now, thanks to streaming platforms with their many titles, it is easy to choose from an enormous catalogue of holiday movies without leaving home. If we want a Hallmark movie, there’s no shortage of family-friendly ones with ice sculpture competitions, gingerbread houses, and carollers making their way door-to-door imparting holiday cheer.

When there are that many Christmas movies available to stream, it may feel like an embarrassment of riches. If you don’t know where to start, here is our selection of 15 Christmas movies to watch and rewatch, from some classics and cult favourites to recent releases.

The Holiday

This romantic Christmas comedy directed by Nancy Meyers is set in England and California. An American film producer (Cameron Diaz) and a British journalist (Kate Winslet), both disappointed in their respective love affairs, decide to travel abroad for the holidays. They meet on a home swap website and decide to exchange houses. The decision will offer both women with opportunities to rediscover the joys of love.

Nightmare before Christmas

The animated movie Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Tim Burton, tells the story of Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King of Halloween Town, who gets tired of his normal routine of scaring people during that spooky holiday. One day, during a walk in the woods, he accidentally discovers Christmas Town. Jack, taken with the holiday, decides that Halloween Town will take over the celebration of Christmas. However, despite his earnest enthusiasm, his interpretation of Christmas turns out to be disturbing and frightening.

Operation Christmas Drop

A cynical congressional assistant, Erica (played by Kat Graham), is willing to do anything for a promotion and so she agrees to go far from home, specifically to the island of Guam, during Christmas week. Her assignment is to inspect a military base and find reasons to justify its closure. Andrew, a pilot played by Alexander Ludwig, is given the task of escorting Erica on her visit. He is not the classic stiff and strutting military man, and instead he has a warm heart and leads Operation Christmas Drop, a real-life ongoing program by the US military that provides gifts and holiday cheer to communities in the Pacific. Spoiler alert though this will likely not come as a surprise: Erica rediscovers the meaning of Christmas and romantic sparks fly between her and Andrew.

Holidate

Questions from prying relatives are one of the most dreaded aspects of the holidays for many singles, including young Sloane (Emma Roberts). After Christmas, she meets Jackson (Luke Bracey) when both of them are returning gifts. Over New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day, and other holidays, their chance encounter blooms into a full-fledged romance.

Trading Places

Trading Places follows two very different characters, Louis Winthorpe III (played by Dan Aykroyd), a successful broker, and Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy), a homeless man, in the weeks leading up to and including Christmas. The two get involved in an elaborate prank orchestrated by two wealthy businessmen. After Louis loses his job and is falsely accused of theft, he and Billy Ray team up with an elaborate scheme involving orange juice futures, and in the process they turn the tables on their foes. An unusual addition to the Christmas catalogue, the film is especially popular in Italy where it is regularly broadcast on Christmas Eve.

Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey

Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey is a fairy tale full of magic revolving around the holidays. The movie tells the story of toymaker Jeronicus Jangle (played by Justin Cornwell as a young man, and Forest Whitaker as an older one), who makes the days of local children more colourful and fun with his amazing inventions. He lives in the picture-perfect town of Cobbleton and is always trying to come up with yet another brilliant new toy. His life is upended when his book of inventions is stolen, but 30 years later he has the opportunity to once again demonstrate his toy-making prowess to the world.

Christmas on the Square

Musical icon Dolly Parton puts herself at the service of the holiday season as she performs 14 original songs in this movie directed and choreographed by Debbie Allen. The story revolves around Regina Fuller (played by Christine Baranski), a rich but evil lady who returns to her hometown to make a generous profit. In order to do so, she wants to evict residents from their homes to make way for a shopping mall, but a homeless woman (who later in the film becomes as angel) played by Parton helps to guide Fuller back to the meaning of the holidays.

Just Another Christmas

The plot of this Brazilian movie, inspired by Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, revolves around Jorge, a real-life Grinch who has a disastrous fall one Christmas Eve. A year later he wakes up suddenly and realises he has no memory of anything that has taken place during the course of the year, even though he has to deal with the consequences of his grinch-like behaviour during that time. And then, a year later, he wakes up again—yes, once again on Christmas Eve and, again, with no memory of the previous year. This premise leads to a film that is a masterful combination of comedy and sincere and heartfelt holiday cheer.

Love Actually

The all-star cast of Love Actually—which includes Hugh Grant and Colin Firth—portray intertwining family and romantic stories that unfold during the holiday season in London. There is the single stepfather struggling with his daughter-in-law, a child in love with a school friend, a husband betrayed by his wife when she has an affair with his brother, a middle-aged couple with the shadow of an extramarital affair hanging over their marriage, and even a bumbling bartender looking for love overseas. Tears and laughter alternate in a magical, wintry England.

The Family Stone

When Everett Stone (played by Dermot Mulroney) brings his girlfriend Meredith Morton (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) home for the holidays, the occasion is marked by a number of mishaps and misunderstandings as well as the fraught love-hate dynamics between the Stone siblings. The matron of the Stone clan is Diane Keaton whose perfect performance alternates between vulnerability and strength as she tries to hold together her noisy brood of children, with their partners in tow. As a career woman who at first turns up her nose at her future mother-in-law and demanding sisters-in-law, Meredith’s journey provides an abundance of comic relief and also some touching moments.

Home Alone

Every parent’s nightmare inspired the plot of the 1990 film Home Alone. Eight-year-old Kevin (played by Macaulay Culkin) makes an unusual wish: He wants his annoying family to disappear. And his wish comes true when his parents forget him at home alone while they are catching a flight to Paris. After the initial dismay comes a euphoric phase, but he certainly does not expect to be targeted by a pair of robbers breaking into all the houses in the neighbourhood that has been deserted over the holidays.

Christmas with the Kranks

Based on the novel by John Grisham, Christmas with the Kranks presents a delightfully humorous situation. A middle-aged couple (played by Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis) decides to skip all the work of preparing for the holidays, from the drudgery of cooking to the stress of shopping, in order to go on a cruise. Just as they are about to depart, however, their daughter (played by Julie Gonzalo) changes her plans and announcing that she is returning home unexpectedly, causing her parents to panic.

Bad Santa

Bad Santa might look like an anti-Christmas movie, but it’s in fact the perfect holiday comedy for anyone who likes to root for the Grinch. Billy Bob Thornton plays Willie, a con man who dresses up as Santa Claus during the holidays to pull off a series of criminal heists with his elf/assistant (played by Tony Cox). His vices don’t end with the robberies he commits. This Santa is also a promiscuous and foul-mouthed drinker, but Christmas can change the attitude of even the most hard-hearted souls.

Elf

Elf is a hilarious comedy recounting the story of Buddy (Will Ferrell), a human raised by elves on the North Pole, after he accidentally ended up there when he was an infant. When Buddy discovers his true human origin, he decides to travel to New York to find his father, who does not even know of his existence. The film is a blend of surreal humour and Christmas cheer as Buddy tries to adjust to human life in New York and become close to his birth father.

The Polar Express

The Polar Express is an animated film based on the book of the same name by Chris Van Allsburg. A young boy begins to doubt the existence of Santa Claus. On Christmas Eve, he is awakened by a mysterious train, The Polar Express, that stops outside his house. He boards the train and embarks on an incredible journey to the North Pole together with a number of other children.