There are plenty of yearly holidays celebrated throughout the world, and many of the biggest ones have movies attached to them. There are movies that capture the spirit of Valentine's Day, there are movies that are best watched around Easter, the horror genre is intrinsically tied to Halloween, and 2023 even graced cinema with a noteworthy Thanksgiving film, appropriately titled Thanksgiving. But no time of the year gets represented quite as often in cinema as Christmastime, perhaps owing to the fact that it's a holiday which - alongside New Year's Eve - concludes every single year.

There are distinct visual elements of Christmas (snow, colors like red and green, warm clothing, etc.) that look good on screen, and it's a time of year when many have time off work, which gives people more time to watch movies. More free time means more Christmas movies getting made each and every year, because there's clearly a real market for them. With such a vast ocean of Christmas movies, it can be difficult to seek out some of the very best, but that's what the following intends to do. It's a ranking of iconic Christmas movies and a few offbeat titles that capture a Christmas feel while also being a little subversive or unexpected, all ranked below from great to greatest.

50 'The Santa Clause' (1994)

Director: John Pasquin

It might not rank as one of the very best movies of 1994, but The Santa Clause is at least something of an iconic Christmas movie, and a reliably family-friendly one, too (well, for the most part). The premise is admittedly a little bizarre, though, given its premise involves a family man accidentally knocking the real Santa Claus unconscious one Christmas Eve, forcing him to take on the mantle of Santa so that the rest of the night's presents can get delivered on time.

Things play out as you'd expect, with a simple story about family and finding newfound purpose in life during middle age, along with getting in tune with the Christmas spirit once more. The Santa Clause has sequels that can be skipped, but the original holds up pretty well for what it is, and though its Christmassy visuals and messages are in-your-face, it does all ultimately feel sincere and good-natured.

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49 'While You Were Sleeping' (1995)

Director: Jon Turteltaub

Though While You Were Sleeping is a cheesy romantic comedy, in many ways, cheese is good as part of a balanced diet, and sometimes, it's okay to indulge a little around the end of the year (that's what New Year's resolutions are for, anyway). It goes hard on Christmas aesthetics and an overall holiday feel, telling a story about mistaken identity and a love triangle that develops unexpectedly between a woman and a pair of brothers.

If you want to be critical, While You Were Sleeping is schmaltzy and predictable, and perhaps corny, too. Again, that's not necessarily a bad thing, and it all depends on what you want out of a holiday-themed movie. Those who like their Christmas movies a little subversive or edgy in some ways should think about staying asleep for this one, but those in the mood for the opposite may well want to wake up for While You Were Sleeping.

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48 'Krampus' (2015)

Director: Michael Dougherty

Make sure not to get Krampus mixed up with Krampus: The Reckoning, which came out the same year and probably only exists so people would get the two films mixed up, and perhaps accidentally watch the latter. Krampus is the real Krampus movie of 2015, though, make no mistake, and is an overall funny, weird, and oftentimes unsettling horror-themed Christmas movie about a folklore monster that's said to be the opposite of Santa Claus.

While Santa is said to give gifts to well-behaved children on Christmas, the titular Krampus is a legendary creature that punishes children who've been naughty rather than nice. At the center of Krampus is a dysfunctional family, the members of which haven't exactly found themselves in the Christmas spirit, which sets the monster after them. It's probably more of a comedic dark fantasy movie than a truly terrifying work of horror, but it's fun overall for those who are after some mild scares come Christmastime.

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47 'Lethal Weapon' (1987)

Director: Richard Donner

Lethal Weapon primarily functions as a buddy comedy/action movie, and a fairly good one at that, but it does also work as a Christmas film, at least in part. It has a familiar premise for those who are well-versed in the kinds of breezy action flicks popular in the 1980s and '90s, with a mismatched pair of cops initially clashing and then learning to work together as they take on a complex case that involves murder and a possible drug ring.

A good chunk of Lethal Weapon plays out a little while before the holiday period, and then it memorably ends on Christmas Day. It's one of those possible holiday movies that doesn't wholeheartedly embrace the most wonderful time of the year, but flirts with it a little and can still qualify for those who are feeling generous with their definition of what a "Christmas movie" is. It's also just a good movie, so if it can be enjoyed any time of the year, why not around the end of December?

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46 'Christmas Bloody Christmas' (2022)

Director: Joe Begos

Plenty of Christmas movies embrace a family-friendly feel, in the spirit of being inclusive and all for the holidays, but Christmas Bloody Christmas certainly isn't one of them (if you couldn't already guess from the title). Not only is it a gleefully violent Christmas-themed movie, but it also might well hold the record for the most profanity featured in a single Christmas film, as it contains close to 500 F-bombs, despite being less than 90 minutes long.

Anyone afraid of movies that embrace violence, bad language, and other adult content to an arguably gratuitous extent might want to stay away from Christmas Bloody Christmas and the ridiculous slasher thrills it provides. It takes gory violence and other things not often associated with the holiday period and makes everything as extreme as possible, resulting in something that could well be a bloody good time for those in the mood for such a thing.

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45 'Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence' (1983)

Director: Nagisa Ōshima

Like Lethal Weapon, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence isn't explicitly Christmas-related until the very end, where the title is finally said out loud. It's also hard to think of Christmas throughout much of the film's duration, as this is a rather bleak and haunting World War II drama about Allied prisoners of war experiencing the hardships of life in a camp run by Japanese forces.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence is about a clash of cultures, focusing on this more than it does scenes you might expect to see in a more traditional war movie (no grand scenes of combat or action here). It looks at the global conflict on a small scale, and presents a balanced view by showing things from two perspectives, exploring why the two sides clash and the consequences that come about as a result. It's a great movie, and "Christmas" is in the title, so why not sneak it into an all-time ranking? Christmas is about generosity, after all, so some of that giving spirit should be afforded to this film, and its subsequent placement here.

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44 'The Bishop’s Wife' (1947)

Director: Henry Koster

Nowadays, Cary Grant might be most well-recognized for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, though he also starred in plenty of broader comedies in the 1930s and '40s that still hold up very well. One of these is The Bishop's Wife, and though it's a comedy set around Christmas, it also functions as a family drama and has a plot that even includes some fantastical elements for good measure.

Like various Christmas movies based around a family, the main character here is a father (David Niven) who's something of a workaholic and at risk of alienating his family. Things change for him when a literal angel (Grant) enters his life and begins to make things better, though it causes a little jealousy and tension for the father, despite the help. The Bishop's Wife is another Christmas film that's all about appreciating what you have and learning to make compromises for the greater good, and it tells this simple yet inevitably nice story quite effectively.

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43 'Scrooge' (1970)

Director: Ronald Neame

While many Charles Dickens stories have proven popular for film adaptations, none seem quite as well-represented within the cinematic as A Christmas Carol. It tells the familiar story of Ebenezer Scrooge, and how his hate for Christmas is challenged one Christmas Eve when he's visited by spirits who convince him to change his outlook on the holiday period, and his life overall. Sometimes, these adaptations are named after the protagonist, as is the case with 1970's Scrooge.

This one manages to stand out from the pack a little by being a musical version of the frequently told story, and a fairly vibrant/enjoyable one at that. Of course, it's unlikely to convert many people who aren't already fans of musicals, and it'll similarly turn off those who don't love Christmas films, too, given it doesn't get much more Christmassy than A Christmas Carol. One could well call Dickens the man who, in a way, invented Christmas...

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42 'The Man Who Invented Christmas' (2017)

Director: Bharat Nalluri

The Man Who Invented Christmas argues, with its title at least, that Charles Dickens more or less invented Christmas as it's now known and celebrated, though perhaps it would be more accurate to say he redefined Christmas. Then again, The Man Who Invented Christmas isn't an entirely straightforward biographical film about Dickens, as it takes an interesting approach to showing how the author developed and wrote one of his defining works: A Christmas Carol.

The real-life world Charles Dickens inhabited crosses over with the one he created for A Christmas Carol, and he discovers things about himself while interacting with - and developing - the characters of his story. It brings something fresh to the biopic genre (if it can be labeled as such), and also manages to recontextualize and retell a familiar story in an engagingly novel way, working as a rock-solid Christmas movie in its own right in the process.

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41 'A Christmas Carol' (1984)

Director: Clive Donner

Got through Scrooge (1970) and still find yourself in the mood for some more Christmas Caroling? There are plenty more to choose from, of course, but 1984's A Christmas Carol could be a decent next step, considering it wasn't made long after and is similarly acclaimed as far as adaptations go. This one isn't a musical, but it makes up for that by having George C. Scott in the lead role, as he was one of those legendarily reliable actors who was always good, no matter what he appeared in.

This version of A Christmas Carol is also a TV movie, but overcomes budgetary limitations thanks to the warmth with which it tells its story, and the fact that Scott commits wholeheartedly to playing the protagonist at the film's center. It's one of the better Christmas Carols out there, and perhaps one of the more direct and least flashy adaptations, too, in turn capturing the essence of the original story without much by way of distractions.

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40 'Christmas in Connecticut' (1945)

Director: Peter Godfrey

Christmas in Connecticut is a bright and lightweight romantic comedy set around Christmas, following a woman who's found success as a food writer at a magazine, yet her writing isn't entirely authentic. Circumstances end up forcing her to set up the life she's pretended to have or risk losing her job, and the entire scheme gets further complicated when love enters the picture in the form of a soldier returning from World War II.

Barbara Stanwyck might be best recognized for her femme fatale roles, but she's also just as capable in less heavy/intense movies, as Christmas in Connecticut shows. It's a very good and charmingly old-fashioned Christmas movie and, interestingly enough, was also remade as a TV movie in 1992... a TV movie that was directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, of all people (his sole directorial credit to date).

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39 'Trading Places' (1983)

Director: John Landis

A film starring Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy, as well as Jamie Lee Curtis, Trading Places takes a comedic look at wealth and power during a decade when money felt, more than ever, like it was all that mattered. In the film, a businessman and a con artist find their positions in life swapped, with one getting everything and one forced to get by with next to nothing, all because of external forces deciding to manipulate their lives through a bet.

If a movie's set around Christmas and seems to center on greed or a lack of generosity, it's not exactly hard to work out where things will progress, but the story here in Trading Places is arguably secondary to the comedy. There might be an argument to be made that Trading Places hasn't aged perfectly when it comes to exploring the sorts of issues it chooses to explore, but it's fairer by '80s standards, and does ultimately end up working surprisingly well as a somewhat offbeat holiday film.

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38 'National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation' (1989)

Director: Jeremiah S. Chechik

A Christmas comedy classic that ended up inadvertently birthing another beloved Christmas movie, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is arguably the best entry in the Vacation series. Other entries were defined by the perpetually unlucky Griswold family traveling to other locations, but Christmas Vacation sees them spending their vacation time at home and with more extended family members than ever.

Typical for these characters, staying in one place proves just as chaotic as taking a trip somewhere more exotic; perhaps even more so. The comedy is broad and in-your-face, but there is something inherently funny about much of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and it earns its status as a comedic classic of its decade for good reason, emerging as a cynically funny yet accessible holiday flick.

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37 'Fanny and Alexander' (1982)

Director: Ingmar Bergman

The holiday period means time off from work for many (albeit not all), and so if there's any time of year when you can afford to spend three hours watching a movie, it's debatably December. And for an epic like Fanny and Alexander, you will need just over three hours if you choose to watch the theatrical cut, and more like five hours if you're feeling brave and want to watch the (arguably superior) miniseries cut.

Whatever the case, Fanny and Alexander is an essential film, standing as debatably the greatest Ingmar Bergman ever made while also being a highlight of the entire 1980s. Many scenes capture the holiday spirit, with various family events and a good deal of snowy weather, even if the central narrative about the two titular children surviving a new (and tyrannical) stepfather doesn't always scream Christmas. It's a unique and tremendously moving film, and well worth the time required to soak it all up.

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36 '3 Godfathers' (1948)

Director: John Ford

John Ford made countless iconic American movies throughout his filmmaking career, and many of them starred the equally iconic John Wayne, usually in a leading role. One of the films the two collaborated on was 3 Godfathers, a uniquely Christmassy Western; two worlds (or genres, if "Christmas" counts as a genre) you don't see colliding all too often.

The whole film takes place around Christmas, and follows a trio of outlaws who come across a dying woman and her infant, and are unable to abandon the child. The woman makes a dying request for her baby to be returned to safety, and the men oblige, despite the riskiness of the mission. It's a film about sacrifice and redemption, and ends up capturing the Christmas spirit within the kind of movie you might not expect it to be in. 3 Godfathers works surprisingly well, overall, and is another typically reliable film from the two aforementioned Johns.

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35 'Bad Santa' (2003)

Director: Terry Zwigoff

It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that a movie called Bad Santa has a mean streak to it for much of its runtime, making it stand out as one of the better R-rated Christmas films out there. It's a movie that blends crime with Christmas (Crimemas?), telling the story about a relatively miserable conman who robs department stores while dressed up as a mall Santa, and the way his life changes after he meets a young and socially outcast kid.

Bad Santa gets kind of bleak by comedy standards, meaning it's possible to define it as a dramedy. It has some heart hidden behind a good deal of coal, and benefits immensely from Billy Bob Thornton delivering one of his best-ever lead performances. It might not be the kind of dark Christmas movie that'll appeal to everyone, but those looking for a dark comedy with a Christmas setting and overall holiday flavor will likely find that Bad Santa satisfies.

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34 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas' (1966)

Directors: Chuck Jones and Ben Washam

Forget about the divisive 2000 live-action movie that's a beloved childhood classic to some a nightmarish fever dream of a movie to others; 1966's How the Grinch Stole Christmas is where it's at as far as adaptations go. This 1966 animated short film manages to condense the beloved Dr. Seuss story into a runtime that clocks in at just under half an hour, meaning little time is wasted and the narrative remains faithfully told without any filler.

The direct yet charming story is about a creature that gives Scrooge some competition when it comes to deciding which fictional character hates Christmas the most. Like the protagonist of A Christmas Carol, the Grinch does eventually have a change of heart, ending things on a hopeful note. The animation used for this version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas is quite simple by modern standards, but it also looks endearing in its own way, and the core of the story is undeniably timeless.

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33 'Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale' (2010)

Director: Jalmari Helander

Jalmari Helander is a filmmaker who specializes in making unusual and rather out-there genre films, as demonstrated more recently in the relentless 2022 action movie that was Sisu. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is even more bizarre, though, given this one centers on the discovery of a creature that's such an evil, twisted version of Santa Claus that it makes Krampus look like the real Father Christmas in comparison.

This is up there with the very best Christmas-themed horror movies, especially because it's played a little more for horror than comedy compared to a good many horror films with a festive spirit. Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale is a remarkably atmospheric movie that's not afraid to take its time throughout, but those willing to give it a chance should find themselves well rewarded with an effectively creepy slow-burn of a blisteringly chilly and largely entertaining film.

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32 'A Christmas Tale' (2008)

Director: Arnaud Desplechin

There are plenty of well-established Christmas movies in the English language, but it's also worth highlighting Christmas movies that are in languages other than English, given the holiday is celebrated outside English-speaking countries. A Christmas Tale is one such movie, being a French production that stars some of the country's most well-known actors, including the likes of Catherine Deneuve and Mathieu Amalric.

It's not quite up there with Fanny and Alexander, admittedly, but A Christmas Tale is still quite long for a holiday movie, with a runtime of approximately 2.5 hours. It centers on a large family, with many of its members not exactly being thrilled about the idea of gathering around Christmastime, but nevertheless doing their best to get along. It's well-acted and balances its family drama with just enough comedy to prevent it from being too downbeat.

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31 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' (1965)

Director: Bill Melendez

A Charlie Brown Christmas joins the ranks of How the Grinch Stole Christmas as another beloved short film with a Christmas theme that was released in the 1960s. It's one of the most well-known pieces of media within the series/franchise that is Peanuts, and follows its titular character as he struggles with finding the true spirit of Christmas, initially believing it to be hopelessly lost under the materialism and money-spending most people get wrapped up in every year.

In that way, it's possible to call A Charlie Brown Christmas ahead of its time, or, at the very least, timeless, given concerns about such a thing persist to this very day. At the same time, this beloved TV short is also just a good deal of fun to watch, and ultimately positive in the kind of message it delivers. It'll resonate for viewers regardless of age, and with its brevity, is always a good pick to watch on Christmas Day if you find most of your time is spent on various (and sometimes lengthy) family events.

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