SEASONAL PICK
Christmas Watch List: Eight Movies for the Season (2026)
christmas · Updated Sep 19, 2026
Unlike Thanksgiving, Christmas has decades of dedicated movies to choose from — so the hard part isn't finding one, it's picking a tone for the room. This is eight that keep coming back, in a rough order from earliest to most recent, spanning black-and-white sentiment to R-rated ensemble comedy.
The list
1.
It's a Wonderful Life (1946) — TMDB 1585. The default answer to "what's the Christmas movie" for a reason — an angel shows a despairing man what his town would look like if he'd never been born. Black and white, unhurried, and the one on this list your grandparents already know by heart.
2.
Gremlins (1984) — TMDB 927. A boy gets an adorable pet for Christmas with three rules attached, and every rule gets broken. Horror-comedy hiding inside a holiday-gift-gone-wrong premise; not for the youngest kids in the room despite the marketing.
3.
A Christmas Story (1983) — TMDB 850. A kid's single-minded campaign for a Red Ryder BB gun, narrated by his adult self. Runs on TV in 24-hour marathons every Christmas Eve for a reason — gentle, specific, and endlessly quotable.
4.
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) — TMDB 5825. One family's increasingly disastrous attempt at "a fun old-fashioned family Christmas," from the tree to the lights to the in-laws. The extended-family-chaos entry, one tier broader than A Christmas Story's single kid's-eye view.
5.
Home Alone (1990) — TMDB 771. A family leaves for vacation without their eight-year-old, who then has to defend the house from two burglars. Live-action slapstick with a real streak of loneliness underneath the booby traps.
6.
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) — TMDB 9479. Stop-motion, and genuinely a Halloween movie that becomes a Christmas one halfway through — the king of Halloween Town discovers Christmas and tries to run it himself. The pick if the household wants something that isn't a straight comedy or drama.
7.
Elf (2003) — TMDB 10719. A human raised as one of Santa's elves goes to New York to find his real father. The most purely good-natured entry here — no edge, no peril, just a very tall man in yellow tights being sincerely delighted by everything.
8.
Love Actually (2003) — TMDB 508. Eight loosely connected London couples and near-couples over the weeks before Christmas. The ensemble-drama-with-jokes end of the list — R-rated for a reason, and the one to save for after the kids are down.
How to use this list
Same rule as the Thanksgiving list: there's no single correct Christmas movie, just a spread of tones. It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Home Alone and Elf work with the whole family in the room; Gremlins and The Nightmare Before Christmas skew toward kids who already like a little spookiness; National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and Love Actually are better once younger kids are asleep.
If your household is tracking together, add whichever of these are new-to-someone to the shared watchlist before December gets busy — a short list agreed on in advance beats a long argument on the night.