There are a LOT of holiday movies out there and I thought I’d actually have trouble narrowing it down to just 6 for today’s post, but it turns out that I’m pickier about movies than I thought and coming up with 6 strong favorites actually took a little thought!

Classic Holiday Movies

The first movie I watched this holiday season was White Christmas. It’s one of my favorites because of the comedic elements as well as the overall message: doing something good for an old friend just because it’s the right thing to do. Bing Crosby is always a pleasure to listen to, after all, and the movie is just so beautiful to watch. I always get choked up at the end.

My other classic favorite is Meet Me In St. Louis. Now, it might not seem like a true Christmas movie since it covers an entire year of the Smith family and lacks a lot of the holiday movie hallmarks, but the Christmas/Winter arc is really the meat of the story, so I consider it a Christmas movie. It also happens to be great Victorian home eye-candy and a fabulous Judy Garland musical.

Animated Holiday Movies

There are tons of retellings of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, but my favorite version, hands down, is Mickey’s Christmas Carol. Todd and I were chatting last night and I wondered aloud about whether Scrooge McDuck was created first for Mickey’s Christmas Carol but, no, he first appeared in “Christmas on Bear Mountain” though he was, yes, created in the image of Ebeneezer Scrooge. I remember we’d taped it off television back when I was a kid (so there’s a nostalgia angle) and would watch it frequently over the holidays and then I had to hunt down, as an adult, which Christmas set it was part of in the days of DVDs. Plus it’s Disney and, say what you may about some of their practices, they make pretty movies. Even the short ones.

Nightmare Before Christmas is another favorite; though some argue whether it’s a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie. We consider it both, actually, but since it specifically deals with the ruining (even if through good intentions) and rescue of Christmas, I think it meets the benchmarks of a holiday movie. It’s fun, quirky, a little dark at times, with amazing music and a pretty good message, too (let’s not cross the holiday streams, it doesn’t end well).

And while I’d really love to have 2, 2, and 2, I just couldn’t NOT include How the Grinch Stole Christmas! I mean, really, I couldn’t. While I actually don’t mind the Jim Carey, live-action version (he was well-suited to the role and I appreciated the delving into the Grinch’s backstory), there’s something about the classic cartoon with the iconic song.

Holiday Rom-Com

Finally, a more modern (though it’s 12 years old, now–what?!) holiday movie favorite is definitely Love, Actually. Between the charm of the interwoven stories, the amazing characters, and the intelligent humor of it all, it is an often-watched movie at our house (and not just at Christmas).

Last week the fine folks at Casper (the foam mattress company, not the ghost) reach out and offered a custom movie night essentials checklist. I’m not being compensated for posting this (though if they wanted to send me a queen-sized mattress to review, I’d be hard-pressed to say no), it’s just something fun that I can totally get behind. Granted, most of our movie nights are spent on the sofa, but the idea of cuddling up and watching Love, Actually in bed with cookies and cocoa? Doesn’t sound too shabby, now does it?