The 15 best Christmas movies to watch in 2025
The festive season is upon us. Reignite your holiday cheer with our selection of the best films set on or around Christmas
By Cayle Reid
WHAT SIGNIFIES THE arrival of the Christmas season in Australia? Unlike our friends in the northern hemisphere, who are greeted by conspicuous signs of the holidays like snow, the coming of Australian Christmas is decidedly less traditional. And what signals it is deeply personal, for that matter. This year, I sensed the arrival of Christmas when I heard Wham’s classic ‘Last Christmas’ playing in a shopping centre. The next morning I awoke with the Christmas spirit in my heart – what can I say?
For many, however, Christmas spirit isn’t brought on spontaneously and will require some intentional effort. Beach-worthy weather and a few Woolies ads for ham are unlikely to get you into the spirit. So, taking matters into your own hands could be a requirement. If that’s the case, few things are better equipped to induce Christmas spirit than a Christmas movie.
Family-friendly classics like Elf, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Home Alone will be getting their annual rewatch – and all are certainties to spark some cheer. But if you’re looking to widen your horizons, we’ve got you covered. These are our picks for the best Christmas movies, that are still worth watching in 2025.
What are the best Christmas movies?
1. Elf
There’s something comforting about returning to Elf every year. The premise is both hilarious and sentimental – Will Ferrell as a human raised by much smaller elves, returning to New York City to find his long lost father. Elf remains the cinematic equivalent of putting up a tree, a signal that the season has truly begun.
2. Die Hard
Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Argue with a wall. Despite the overwhelming evidence that it is, in fact, a Christmas movie, many are still unwilling to concede that simply being set around Christmas time is enough to make something a Christmas movie. Bruce Willis’ John McClane is only in Los Angeles because he’s meeting his wife for Christmas. When he happens to get sidetracked with a barefoot battle through Nakatomi Plaza, that doesn’t erase the Christmas-y aspect. The story is really about reuniting with those you love for Christmas by any means necessary.
3. Love Actually
Rewatching Love Actually has become its own kind of seasonal ritual. It’s messy, but seeing everyone in London either falling in love, falling apart, or sprinting through a Heathrow terminal is a good time. Everyone will have their own opinion on the real heroes and villains of the film – Alan Rickman, indisputably a fiend – but beneath the antics is the real reason it endures, its admittedly sappy belief that love in all its awkward, inconvenient forms is worth the fuss.
4. Home Alone
What would you actually do if you had the whole house to yourself at Christmas? Kevin McCallister gets to live that fantasy in Home Alone, although it turns out the dream isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. When a pair of thieves attempt to pilfer his valuables, Kevin must defend his home with a DIY security system. The slapstick comedy remains as funny now as it was in 1990.
5. The Polar Express
The uncanny animation of The Polar Express hasn’t aged flawlessly, but somehow that only adds to its charm. What makes the film work is its total commitment to child-like wonder. On Christmas Eve, a young boy boards a train that appears out of nowhere and journeys to the North Pole to meet Santa, along with a train’s worth of children. I will be the first to admit that this film formed my belief that the North Pole was a real place.
6. How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Jim Carrey’s Grinch is perhaps the most cartoonishly evil villain in all of film. Like, who hates Christmas? That might be why it resonates, however, because those people do exist, and Whoville’s cheer can be cloying. Of course, the story is really about a misfit discovering that connection is the thing he’s been avoiding all along, but How the Grinch Stole Christmas remains a favourite for the Christmas haters. It also leaves plenty of unanswered questions, like: what species is the Grinch? Where on earth did he get that dog? Why does Anthony Hopkins narrate this? Why does the Grinch only sometimes wear clothes?
7. The Holdovers
The Holdovers isn’t a Christmas movie in the traditional sense. It comes from the Die Hard school of Christmas movies that are only Christmas movies because they’re set around Christmas. Alexander Payne’s film trades familiar holiday sweetness for something more affecting: three people stuck together, each nursing some loneliness. Paul Giamatti gives one of his career-best performances as a curmudgeonly teacher marooned at a nearly empty boarding school and forced to babysit a handful of holdover students. Dominic Sessa plays one such student, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph earned an Oscar for her role as a cafeteria manager who is also staying behind because she has nowhere else to go.
8. The Holiday
Two women, burnt out and heartbroken, swap lives in an attempt to escape themselves, only to stumble into exactly what they were looking for. By the time Jack Black is composing love songs and Jude Law is being, well, Jude Law, you’re reminded that some of the best Christmas movies don’t reinvent the wheel, they just make you feel good.
9. The Santa Clause
Carried almost entirely by Tim Allen’s grumpy-dad-turned-reluctant-Santa energy, The Santa Clause is a nineties classic. The premise is absurd. Allen accidentally causes Santa’s demise and inherits his job via fine print, but the film commits to the bit so hard that you don’t question it. It lands some surprisingly emotional leaps without coming off as overly sentimental.
10. Klaus
Klaus is one of the few modern Christmas films that already feels destined to become a classic. The animation is stunning, with a storybook-like quality to it, but it’s the film’s emotional intelligence that makes it so great. A wealthy scion is sent to a tiny town in Northern Norway to work as a postman and is tasked with posting 6,000 letters in a year, or else he’ll be cut off from the family fortune. There, he runs into the reclusive toymaker we know and love.
11. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Few films capture the chaos of the holidays like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Clark Griswold’s quest for the perfect family Christmas is, naturally, disastrous, and watching it unfold is a hilarious experience. The endless string of calamities make for a supremely entertaining watch at any time of the year, but especially during the Christmas season.
12. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
The most classic of classic Christmas movies, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a stop-motion marvel that carries and insane amount of nostalgia power. Its slightly jerky animation only adds to the charm, creating a world that feels magical and a little uncanny. The story of an outcast finding his place still resonates.
13. Carol
Carol isn’t a Christmas movie in the conventional sense, but again, it takes place at Christmas time. Todd Haynes’ film captures New York in winter, and the story is one of longing and love constrained by circumstance. It follows a forbidden affair between an aspiring photographer and a recent divorcee. Warning: this is not exactly a heartwarming Christmas classic.
14. The Nightmare Before Christmas
Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas finds perfect middle ground between Halloween and Christmas. Jack Skellington’s discovery of Christmas Town turns the familiar holiday into something slightly dark. The stop-motion animation is a delight, the songs are campy, and the story is more than just macabre flourishes. Proof that good Christmas movies don’t need to all follow the same formula.
15. It’s a Wonderful Life
It’s a Wonderful Life is the gold standard of Christmas cinema. It makes almost every other holiday movie feel like a footnote. Frank Capra’s classic tells a story so simple it could be a parable: a frustrated businessman becomes suicidal, but an angel shows him what life would have been without his existence, revealing the impact he’s had on others. Watching it remains a ritual for anyone seeking the kind of warm, reflective glow only a good Christmas movie can deliver.
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