My Favorite Christmas Movies

This weekend, my little 6 year old cousin has been staying with us for her annual Christmas sleepover. We do crafts, drink hot chocolate, decorate the tree and of course watch plenty of Christmas movies. Seeing how excited she gets about Christmas reminds me of how much I LOVED it as a kid (and still do). My sister, brother and I would watch Christmas movies the whole month of December, sometimes even on repeat.
Curled up with her on the couch this morning watching Christmas cartoons, it got me thinking about all the Christmas movies that I have loved so much over the years. It’s a tradition to watch these every year and when we don’t, things just don’t feel right. There were always plenty of classic cartoons to watch like Rudolph, The Grinch, Frosty and Mickey’s A Christmas Carol, but here are some of the ones that have stuck with us as we’ve gotten older.

We love Christmas Vacation so much that our old VHS copy was practically worn out and was replaced with a DVD as soon as we could. I remember one year my sister and I watched it over and over again, every few days. Needless to say, we can recite it line for line. Anyone who spends the holidays with lots of family can relate to the mayhem and chaos, but I can’t picture it any other way.

Muppets! Sesame Street! Fraggle Rock! What more could you want in a Christmas special? Muppet Family Christmas always makes me feel warm and happy. It’s childhood nostalgia at its finest. I don’t know if its the talking snowman, a house full of Muppets, the Swedish Chef determined to cook Big Bird or  the wonderful renditions of Christmas carols that gets to me most. Probably a combination of everything. (Hint: You can watch the entire thing on YouTube in the clip I linked above)

In The Family Stone, the house is a character unto itself and the quirky family that fills it is just icing on the cake. The film is full of a great cast: Diane Keaton, Craig T. Nelson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Dermot Mulroney, Luke Wilson, Rachel McAdams and Claire Danes to name a few. Every time that I watch it, I wish that there as more afterward. I fall in love with the characters and want to see how their lives continue onward. To learn more about the house, check out what Hooked on Houses has to say.

As a kid, the idea of having the whole house to myself like in Home Alone sounded like so much fun, up until the point where he had to defend his house from the bad guys…and the tarantula. I could do without that. I still like to watch it when it’s on TV during the holidays. Young Macaulay Culkin is just too cute.

Not exactly the most uplifting Christmas movie (there is a lot of heartbreak in there), Love Actually follows a series of Londoners in the six weeks leading up to Christmas. With fantastic performances by Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Liam Neeson, Keira Knightly and Bill Nighly. It’s a modern take on what the holidays are really about.

My all-time favorite Christmas movie has to be It’s a Wonderful Life. It holds a special place in our family’s hearts because 21 years ago this December 21st my mother had my little sister and had to spend Christmas Eve night alone in the hospital. That night It’s a Wonderful Life was on the television in her hospital room as the snow came down outside and she watched it while holding on to my newborn sister. Its the first movie my sister ever “watched” and it reminds us all of that little Christmas baby that came home the next day on Christmas morning.

While writing this post, I realized that there are so many more Christmas movies that I love and wanted to share, but I just didn’t have enough time to write about them all. A Christmas Carol, Miracle on 34th Street, Scrooged, White Christmas, The Santa Clause, Elf, Jingle All The Way (My boyfriend’s personal favorite. He’s a big Arnold fan), I’ll Be Home for Christmas, Just Friends, Bad Santa, The Family Man, Prancer, Gremlins (it counts!), Die Hard (it also counts!), Holiday Inn, The Shop Around the Corner, the list goes on….

And now I turn it to you: What are your favorite Christmas movies?