147 thoughts on “Best Christmas Movies Statistically Speaking”

1. Glad to see this Christmas movie page was expanded. I have seen 23 of these movies. I have seen more than those included. Ironically, not all of your and Steve’s movies are the same, but my tally for both lists are the same.

   I have no trouble with Christmas Crime films being included. Films I have seen that fit that genre which I watch every December are The Lady in The Lake, Lady in a Train, and Fitzwilly (comedy about Dick Van Dyke and staff of formally rich lady stealing merchandise and money to fund her charitable donations as she thinks she is still rich). I have yet to see Christmas Holiday. It is rather unfortunate that I read Bob’s synopsis as I like to see films not knowing what happens yet. Of course, I am a big fan of film noir. I have seen It Happened on 5th Avenue which I understand was the replacement film.

   I am happy to see that Alistair Sim’s version of A Christmas Carol has finally become a part of your database. It is my favourite Christmas movie of all time. I am surprised that it is as low as 48. It is number 5 on Steve’s video. It is generally seen as the most faithful film version of the book I have seen every version of A Christmas Carol on both the big and small(TV Movie) screen. I will be watching Sim’s classic tonight as I do every Christmas Eve.

   I have listed others of my favourites on Steve’s video channel.

   Somewhere I cannot remember where Cogerson wished me well for my Christmas concerts. Thankyou. I had four performances of Handel’s Messiah in a row around The Fraser Valley December 13th to 16th as well as the dress rehearsal on the 12th for 5 nights of classical music singing in a row. My voice was tired by the time that run was over.

   Merry Christmas to Cogerson and family, my fellow contributors and UMR readers.

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   1. Seasons greetings to you too Flora.

      Sorry about potentially spoiling Christmas Holiday for you. It was presumptuous of me to think that every follower of this site would have seen it my now. Regrets again.

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   2. In looking over the list of versions of A Christmas Carol, I see there are a handful of versions I have not seen. I should therefore have said that I have seen MOST versions of A Christmas Carol.

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   3. Hey Flora…..this is my 16,000 comment….yeah. Steve got me motivated to expand the Christmas list. As for the difference in movies…I threw some of his out…and added some in. My tally like Steve’s actually went down compared to his You Tube video. My total went from 62 to 57..even with an additional 25 movies added in. I can not believe the Christmas season is already over….though we did get three Xmas movies in today…How The Grinch Stole Christmas, Love Actually and Arthur Christmas. Glad you concerts went well. I think Sim’s Christmas Carol got added in last year….but finally made it to this list this year. Good feedback as always.

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2. Bad Mom’s Christmas?

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   1. Hey Anonymous….Bad Moms Christmas will be added to the table on the next update…giving us 101 and 102 movies….as your comment got me thinking about Daddy’s Home 2….both Christmas movies that do not seem to be included in Xmas movies yet….but they will be soon. Thanks for the suggestion.

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3. Hey Bob…..Christmas Holiday has been taken off the list….and replaced with It Happened On 5th Avenue..a movie that was not in the database. Wanted to keep the tally at 100 movies.

   I agree with you that the “definition” of Christmas movie is hard to pin down. When I expanded this from 17 to 100 movies…..I generally included a movie if it was listed on the all the lists I referenced. That would include the list Steve sent me, the list on Video Hound’s Golden Movie Retriever Book and an IMDb list I used.

   Christmas Holiday made all the lists. Well….your opinion was considered…and Christmas Holiday was removed. You see…we listen….sometimes…lol.

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   1. HI BRUCE

      Thanks for the feedback and for “listening”. Not sure what Steve will make of you taking Eugene off the list though of course I have lost my Deanna

      ! don’t think that any of the light entertainment stars of yesteryear like Crosby, Hope, Kelly and Astaire could ever top Bing himself as the Classic Era’s King of Christmas while Meet Me in St Louis and especially Have yourself a Merry Little Christmas will probably always ensure Judy will be the Christmas Queen of Old Hollywood.I even if you don’t crown her Cogerson’s Box Office Queen!

      Anyway have a good Christmas as you deserve it.

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4. Nice work Bruce, glad my Xmas list came in useful.

   100 films eh, that was my original target for the video but I had second thoughts and cut it down to 75. I was even going to include shorts like The Snowman and Mickey’s Christmas Carol at one time.

   I’ve seen 29 of the 100 on your list, weirdly that’s less than my tally from the video which was 33 out of 75.

   All the expected Xmas classics are on the list – Die Hard, Black Christmas, Krampus, Silent Night Deadly Night etc [Bob snarls] I see you didn’t include Die Hard 2, well it was set at Xmas and one of the last lines in the film is “Merry Christmas” what more can you want from a Xmas classic? 😉

   At one point I had included Lethal Weapon (1987) in my list of Xmas movies, which does have a Xmas theme though it’s a tiny subplot. Iron Man 3 was also included on my original list. [Bob rolls his eyes]

   Anyway nice to see Die Hard in the top 5, who cares what Willis thinks eh? 🙂

   An updated epic Xmas page. Vote Up!

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   1. Hey Steve….it is very strange that both of our tallies went down….even with 33% movies added to the count. Yep….I threw out Die Hard 2….if only McClane would have killed one of the bad guys and left a message on his shirt saying…Ho Ho Ho…now I have a machine gun…lol. I used your list and a few others….if it was listed all on the sources I added it. So thanks for motivating me to update this list….your efforts are greatly appreciated…..Merry Christmas to you. 9 more minutes till we get there…and then I have to do my Santa duties…..hope my 9 year old does not read this comment…lol.

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5. HI BRUCE You have turned a fine Christmas movies stats page into a great one in my view and this expanded page and Steve’s 75-entry epic video are fine Christmas companion pieces for each other so “Voted Up!”

   However you may have seen from my exchanges with Steve that there are some movies classified as Christmas ones that I have question marks about in that respect. Just because a movie mentions Christmas in the title, or is set round Christmas time, doesn’t in my opinion automatically make it a Christmas movie. I mean a film has to be set in SOME TIME of the year. If for example a movie about a vicious hit man is set on the 4th July does that make it a 4th July celebratory movie?

   I can’t be too positive about Christmas in July because it’s some time since I have seen it but if my memory is correct it is more one of Preston’s social commentary movie than a Christmas flick, the title deriving from the old saying “Christmas has come early this year,” with the connection of that to the movie being Dick Powell out of the blue getting a life changing stroke of good luck.

   However at least that theme is true to the spirit of Christmas, whereas to my mind some maniac slasher running around chopping up sorority virgins is devoid of any seasonal good will, even -indeed especially! – if he is doing all that at Christmas time.

   Nor does it seem to me to be in the Christmas spirit for my Deanna to be driven to prostitution and a life of misery in 1944’s Christmas Holiday by murderous husband Gene Kelly though Deanna insisted that the hooker be sanitised on screen as a bar-room “hostess-singer” which caused critics to complain that this trick made Maugham’s story implausible as it was unlikely that Kelly would have come after his wife to murder her for dragging down his family name as a mere “singer”. Continued in Part 2

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   1. However, whilst murderous husbands on the rampage for whatever reason is not something that I would like my grandchildren to think Christmas was all about, I suppose that as this is Christmas Eve we must give Steve at least some poetic licence as he was probably determined to get Eugene into his Christmas video somewhere and Steve can be pleased that Kelly got excellent reviews for the movie with some critics opining that the Irishman stole the acting honours.

      Also of course the dividing line for a Christmas movie can be highly subjective though Steve tells us that even Mr Gimme More himself doubted whether Die Hard was a Christmas movie and if the great Henpecked One had his own doubts a humble soul such as myself can be forgiven for querying the genre of certain movies classified as Xmas ones.

      Anyway let’s close on a positive note and I was pleased to see that 3 of my own top 4 movies are in your Top 8 –Wonderful Life, meet Me in St Louis and White Christmas – while my 4th favourite, Big Bob’s Holiday Affair is 37th on your list, quite good for a Mitchum flick that was really a B movie in its day.

      The one fly in the ointment is that you have not taken up my hint that Judd Nelson’s Cancel Christmas should be included. It is clear therefore that despite being a regular on your site for about 6 years now I still do not have the pull with you that The Master has and it is in fact a great pit that HE is not around to give the definitive view about those movies that are Christmas and those which are not.

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      1. Interesting posts Bob and I understand what you’re getting at.

         IMO not all Christmas movies need to be light harmless fun and frolics with a heartfelt festive spirit. Indeed the top rated Christmas movie ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ did get quite dark and nasty in the last half hour before wrapping everything up in one of the most famous tearjerking happy endings in movie history.

         On my channel page I wrote that this was a “selection of movies with a Xmas theme” and Die Hard did have a Xmas theme running all the way thru it. In other words the movies I chose didn’t have to be specifically about Xmas but that the festive season was a reasonably important background setting chosen by the director (or writer).

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         1. HI STEVE Thanks for the feedback on my additional Christmas posts.

            I DID notice that you had emphasised the “Christmas theme running through it” aspect of your video selections but for me that theme should be central and not incidental to the overall plot. For example the 1955 Stanley Kubrick film The Killing was all about robbing the cash takings at a race track on a certain Saturday afternoon but it was a heist movie and not a movie about horse-racing [I’ll have to check to make sure that The Work Horse hasn’t classified it as a sports movie!]

            I take your point about some scenes in Wonderful Life reflecting ruthlessness and meanness of spirit and indeed the ghosts in Sim’s 1951 Scrooge scared me a bit when I was a kid. However those movies had at least happy Christmas-type endings to them and there were no madmen in them hacking lovely young ladies to pieces. If Mother Bates had only gone berserk at Christmas time would you have regarded Psycho as a Christmas movie?

            I am not dogmatic on the point but I have the sentimental possibly old-fashioned preference for “Christmas movies” being something all the family can enjoy. In Durbin/Kelly’s Christmas Holiday film historians claim that on top of everything else Eugene’s character was covertly incestuous in both Maugham’s story and the film itself.

            However I have conceded that there are normally fine dividing lines in the matter and even then I would have to watch the likes of Black Christmas etc again to be positive in deciding what side of the lines I wanted to come down on, but in a way it’s academic because as long as I have sight of the wonderful posters you provide I will not be overly fussed about whether the related movies are classified as True Christmas or not.

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      2. Hey Bob…I would love to include Judd’s Cancel Christmas….but it sadly did not reach theaters….which is pretty much the case for every single movie he makes these days. Merry Christmas…..yours is already hours old….we are in the 8 minute countdown now. Hope you have an awesome day.

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