From Capra's small-town redemption story to Die Hard's Christmas-Eve heist, the films we put on every December and the ones that earned their place beside them.
The full ranking
From Capra's small-town redemption story to Die Hard's Christmas-Eve heist, the films we put on every December and the ones that earned their place beside them.
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Frank Capra's dark-edged holiday parable, which flopped in 1946 and only became a Christmas perennial decades later through public-domain TV repeats. Despondent small-town banker George Bailey (James Stewart) gets a tour of how miserable Bedford Falls would be without him, courtesy of a second-class angel (Henry Travers). The Christmas movie almost every list since has been compared to.
Die Hard (1988)
John McTiernan's Christmas-Eve siege thriller. Off-duty NYC cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) flies to L.A. to reconcile with his wife at a Nakatomi Plaza office party; German thieves led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) take everyone hostage and McClane is the only one off the guest list. The argument about whether it's a Christmas movie is itself part of the Christmas-movie tradition.
The Apartment (1960)
Billy Wilder's Best Picture winner doubles as one of the great Christmas-week films. Jack Lemmon's insurance clerk lends his Manhattan apartment to executives for affairs; the Christmas Eve party and New Year's Eve finale turn the calendar against him. Shirley MacLaine's elevator girl gets one of the most devastating sad-Christmas plotlines in American film.
The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Ernst Lubitsch's Budapest-set workplace romance, adapted from a Hungarian play. Two leather-goods shop clerks (James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan) bicker on the job, not realizing they're each other's anonymous pen-pal romantic correspondent. Set in the days before Christmas, it's the Lubitsch touch at its warmest, and the spine of every You've Got Mail since.
A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)
Bill Melendez's 25-minute CBS special, written by Charles M. Schulz himself. Charlie Brown directs the neighborhood Nativity pageant and worries that Christmas has become too commercial; Linus reads from the Gospel of Luke; Vince Guaraldi's trio plays. Brief enough to be a movie but big enough to define a whole American conception of the holiday.
A Christmas Story (1983)
Bob Clark's Indiana-set memory piece, adapted from Jean Shepherd's prose. Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) just wants a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas; everyone tells him he'll shoot his eye out. Decoder rings, leg lamps, soap-poisoning, and the tongue-on-the-flagpole sequence have made the film TBS's Christmas Day marathon for thirty years and counting.
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Tim Burton's gothic suburban fable. An unfinished artificial boy with scissor blades for hands (Johnny Depp) is rescued from his inventor's mansion by an Avon lady (Dianne Wiest), brought into pastel suburbia, and inevitably misunderstood. Danny Elfman's snow-fall theme and the bittersweet framing flashback have given the picture a permanent place in the Christmas rotation.
The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Henry Selick's stop-motion fairy tale, from a Tim Burton story and Danny Elfman songs. Halloweentown's pumpkin king Jack Skellington stumbles into Christmas Town and decides to run the holiday himself; predictably, things go wrong. Equally beloved at Halloween and Christmas, with a soundtrack now standard at school musicals everywhere.
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
George Seaton's Christmas-set courtroom comedy, made on location in actual Macy's. A department store hires an old man (Edmund Gwenn, who won an Oscar) who claims to be the real Santa Claus; a cynical mother (Maureen O'Hara), her daughter (Natalie Wood), and a young lawyer must defend him when New York State puts Kringle on trial. A holiday original that several remakes have failed to top.
Carol (2015)
Todd Haynes's adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel The Price of Salt, set in 1952 New York at Christmas. A married Manhattan housewife (Cate Blanchett) and a young shop clerk (Rooney Mara) begin a relationship that takes them on a road trip away from holiday family obligations. Edward Lachman's grainy 16mm photography and Carter Burwell's score make it the most achingly winter-set love story of the past decade.
Ranked across 6 sources: Time Out · 50 Best Christmas Movies of All Time, Ranked · 0.5x Weight (2025); Rolling Stone · 30 Best Christmas Movies of All Time, Ranked · 0.5x Weight (2024); Vulture · 40 Best Christmas Movies of All Time, Ranked · 0.5x Weight (2018); Rotten Tomatoes · Tomatometer · Ranked by Critic Score · 0.5x Weight (June 2026); Rotten Tomatoes · Popcornmeter · Ranked by Audience Score · 1.5x Weight (June 2026); IMDb · Ranked by User Rating · 1.5x Weight (June 2026). Full scoring is on the Methodology tab above.
Related lists
Browse every Top 10 List, see the experts and aggregators behind them, or play the day’s puzzles.