Top 10 Christmas Movies I Always Watch - My favorite holiday films

I love the movies this time of year! I try to watch all my favorites at least once every holiday season, so I wanted to put together a list of them just in case you needed some recommendations for your own personal Christmas Film Festival! While I'm talking about this, I would love to hear what your favorite winter holiday movies are in the comments below. And here we go, in no particular order, Muppet Christmas Carol! I think that this is the best movie involving Muppets and the best adaptation of A Christmas Carol that I've ever seen. It's oddly true to the original book. There are lines straight out of Charles Dickens, Gonzo plays Charles Dickens, it's great! What it lacks in visual effects, which I'm sure were great at the time - I remember being terrified of it as a child but I loved it so much that it didn't really matter - they make up for in puppetry and costumes and the sets and the music and it's just a really good movie. There are some really good songs and honestly I don't know why pop artists don't cover the songs from Muppet Christmas Carol, maybe it's a rights thing, but if I were releasing a Christmas album with a bunch of covers, I would want it to be like half Muppet Christmas Carol. So out of all of the classic stop motion animation Christmas movies, my all-time favorite has to be The Year Without a Santa Claus. I don't know if you've seen it. This is the one with heat miser and snow miser and it is wonderful. I know everybody thinks of Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer or Santa's coming to town, but this one is just so clever and wonderful and it makes me really happy. When I was a kid, we actually did not own year without a Santa Claus, but my aunt and uncle who lived like five hours away had it, so every time that we drove up to visit them around Christmastime, I made sure that we watched year without a Santa Claus because it made me so happy and it made it seem like even more special because I only got to watch it with them. But as an adult, I tracked it down and now I have it and I want to watch it all the time. The music in this one is also really good, at least two of the tracks on my hypothetical Christmas covers album will be the snow miser song and the heat miser song because they're so catchy. I highly recommend that one. And El.f I can't not recommend Elf. I feel like it is a modern Christmas classic. I feel like kids are gonna be watching this and laughing at the special effects in like 30 years. There are so many Christmas comedies that have come out in the two thousands and I've seen a bunch of them and they're all really fun but there is something about this movie that I feel like has lasting power as a Christmas classic! It's really funny without being too vulgar and it doesn't lose that heartwarming aspect that I think is just so important for Christmas movies. The laugh cannot be at the expense of the warmth of the whole story and I think that Elf does a really good job of doing both of those things. I'm also really into Christmas and so is Buddy the elf so I feel like I've kind of found my people when I watch this movie. Fun fact: when this movie came out, for a long time, my voicemail recording said "buddy the elf, what's your favorite color?" It's probably the most quotable Christmas movie I've ever seen. I love elf. I love it. The next two are home alone and home alone 2. I actually never saw these as a child. I watched them in my adult life because everybody talked about them and I wanted to see what I was missing and they are great. And last year when I went home to New Jersey for Christmas, I actually recommended that we sit and watch them because my mom hadn't seen them either, that's why we've never watched them when I was younger. I think she kind of always assumed that she wouldn't enjoy them, slapstick humor is not really her thing, but there's so much more to these movies than the scenes where the bad guys are slipping on ice and getting hit in the head with irons and falling down stairs and all the things that happen to them. Something about home alone two really hits home for me as well because it takes place in New York City! When I was a kid, I have really fond memories of going into New York City, seeing the big tree in Rockefeller Center, going ice skating, but I also really liked that in the second one, Kevin McCallister goes on the offensive; he's not on the defensive anymore. He finds out that these guys are out of jail and that they're going to steal money from kids. He's really come into his own since having to fight for his life in the first movie, so the fact that he decides that he's gonna put himself back in this situation again is really brave and awesome of him. I think it's very Christmassy and I enjoy it quite a bit. But none of the sequels after that. Gremlins! I actually did not realize until I rewatched it recently that Gremlins is kind of a Christmas movie. I love the idea of a kind scary Christmas movie and gremlins is so much fun. The next one is Miracle on 34th Street, both the original and the remake. I feel like the remake is actually pretty good, mostly because Mara Wilson is the best and she still is. You should follow her on Twitter if you're not already. I really like the story in this one and without spoiling it for you if you haven't seen it, it leaves a lot to your imagination and doesn't just hand you the answers and I love that about it! I also like that they have the Thanksgiving Day Parade, it has that New York City at Christmas vibe that I love so much. Really super good movie. The next one is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I think most parts of this movie are super funny. Some of the humor is a bit outdated and I just kind of ignore that a little bit because I enjoy the rest of it. But one of the things that I really like about this movie is they go big with everything. The Christmas lights, the turkey, the tree that they bring in! It has quite a lot of commentary on the Christmas season and I enjoy it. The next thing that I'm going to mention is not a movie but I like it enough that I don't care. And that is the Chrismukkah episodes of The OC. I don't know if you've watched The OC. I did not when it was airing originally. I was 16 at the time and my parents saw the commercials and were terrified and forbade me from watching it. It was right after American Idol and I tried to sneak an episode here or there but I always got in trouble. And my husband Matt explained to me his theory that this show which, to outsiders appeared to be just a show about bad kids drinking and going to parties and getting in big trouble, was really just about a giant nerd and that is the reality that I discovered when we watched it all from beginning to end on DVD and I think it's really great. It's probably one of my favorite TV shows of all time. So Seth Cohen who is the main nerd character is half Jewish, half Catholic, and he combines the two to celebrate Christmukkah and he comes up with all these creative ways to celebrate this holiday, he gets so into it, and I think they're just some really great episodes of television that I go back and revisit pretty much every holiday season. And the last Christmas movie that I'm going to talk about in this video is A Christmas Story. this is the story of a kid who asks for a rifle for Christmas and everyone keeps telling him "you'll shoot your eye out!" but he does not listen. There are some really fun moments in this movie is such as the way that his mother ends up getting his little brother to finally eat and the major award that his father receives in the mail. I just get so happy about all the festive stuff around this time of year and even though I'm always really exhausted and stressed out during the Christmas season, I like to make time to sit down and watch these movies and it cheers me up and helps get me through it. Anyway, I hope you're having a lovely holiday season so far, don't forget to tell me your favorite holiday movies in the comments below, thank you for watching, and I'll see you soon!