The 25 Best Christmas Movies On Netflix
What's Christmas without peppermint mochas, candy canes, and Christmas movies?!
Elf has always been my favorite Christmas movie. When I was growing up, we couldn't have Christmas without finding a good selection of Christmas movies to watch as a family and spend time together.
There are the classic favorites like Rudolph, Frosty the Snowman, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and then there are more modernized Christmas movies that step out of the traditional Christmas movie standards.
If you're looking to change things up a little bit this Christmas, Netflix has a great selection of Christmas movies. Some of them make for great family movies, some are great with a group of friends, and others are perfect for watching with your significant other.
A great Christmas movie, for me, will have the perfect combination of comedy, holiday spirit, and sometimes an underlying love story can make the movie a little more interesting.
If you're looking for something with any of these three things, or even with all of them, there are lots of amazing Christmas movies on Netflix right now!
If you want to explore different Christmas movies or just don't know what's good, here are the 25 best Christmas movies on Netflix.
1. A Christmas Prince
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 59%
Amber Moore is an aspiring young journalist who is sent to cover a press conference in the foreign nation of Aldovia regarding the crown prince Richard, who is set to take the throne following his father's recent death. Richard is supposedly an irresponsible playboy and is also rumored to be planning to abdicate. Though Amber hopes her adventure will lead to a big break, the prince fails to appear for the press conference, frustrating the assembled journalists.
However, Amber is soon mistaken for the new tutor of the young princess, Emily, and takes the opportunity to go undercover to investigate the rumors of abdication.
2. Dear Santa
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 52%
Crystal is a girl who comes from a wealthy family. She loves spending money and eventually ends up draining her parents' bank account. When this happens, they give her until Christmas to clean up her act and get her shopping addiction under control. Should Crystal fail to comply, her credit cards will be promptly canceled.
Petrified at the prospect of having no money and no boyfriend, Crystal has a flash of inspiration when she finds a letter to Santa from seven-year-old Olivia.
3. Bad Santa
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 78%
Willie T. Stokes is a con man and a thief who partners up with his friend Marcus for a holiday fraud each year. Willie gets a job as Santa Claus at a shopping mall, his pal tags along as an elf, and they use their employee status to crack mall security and rob stores blind just before Christmas.
However, there's one flaw to this plan. Willie is a bitter, foul-mouthed and perpetually grouchy alcoholic who doesn't care for kids, and it's all he can do to keep himself from getting fired while on the job.
4. Gremlins
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 84%
A gadget salesman is looking for a special Christmas gift for his son and finds one at a store in Chinatown. The shopkeeper is reluctant to sell him the "mogwai," but sells it to him with the warning to never expose him to bright light, water, or to feed him after midnight.
All of this happens and the result is a gang of gremlins that decide to tear up the town on Christmas Eve.
5. How The Grinch Stole Christmas
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 53%
The crabby and reclusive Grinch, who hates Christmas, becomes annoyed with the out-of-control Christmas festivities in Whoville, the town lying below his cave dwelling on Mt. Crumpit.
But after the Grinch conspires to deprive the Who's of their favorite holiday by sneaking into town on Christmas eve to steal everything associated with the holiday, he learns that the spirit of Christmas goes much deeper than Tinsel and Toys 6 or Legend of Frosty The Snowman.
6. Legend of Frosty The Snowman
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 41%
The Legend of Frosty the Snowman finds the fable's Christmas icon arriving in a town called Evergreen. The town's mayor and the school's principal make sure the place runs on a tight schedule that is short on fun and festivity.
Frosty befriends the mayor's children, and thanks to his influence, the town begins to accept that magic is not only real but can help make Evergreen an even better place.
7. A Holiday Engagement
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 34%
Jilted by her high-powered fiance just before Thanksgiving and terrified of disappointing her demanding mother, Hillary Burns hires an unemployed artist to pretend to be her fiance over the holiday weekend.
She soon discovers, however, that the hired replacement, David, may not be a replacement after all — but the real thing.
8. The Ref
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 71%
Caroline and Lloyd are a married couple who are constantly at each other's throats and are masters at crafting acid-tongued barbs at the other's expense. Indeed, they are so obsessed with belittling each other that they never stop, not even at gunpoint.
Such is the premise of the acerbic comedy The Ref, which shows what happens when this quarrelsome duo is taken hostage.
9. White Christmas
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 77%
This Christmas classic starring Bing Crosby is a romantic tale that takes place in a Vermont lodge — where it is almost always, a "White Christmas."
10. While You Were Sleeping
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 80%
Lonely transit worker Lucy Eleanor Moderatz pulls her longtime crush, Peter, from the path of an oncoming train. At the hospital, doctors report that he's in a coma, and a misplaced comment from Lucy causes Peter's family to assume that she is his fiancée.
When Lucy doesn't correct them, they take her into their home and confidence. Things get even more complicated when she finds herself falling for Peter's sheepish brother, Jack.
11. Disney's The Santa Clause
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 75%
Scott Calvin is a divorced father whose strained relationship with his son, Charlie, begins to mend only after a bizarre twist of fate transforms him into the new Santa Clause.
12. Disney's The Santa Clause 2
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 55%
Scott Calvin has been Santa Claus for the past eight years, and his loyal elves consider him the best Santa ever.
But Santa's got problems. He's even mysteriously losing weight, and things quickly go south when he finds out that his son, Charlie, has landed on this year's "naughty" list.
13. 12 Dates Of Christmas
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 50%
Young Kate finds herself reliving Christmas Eve (including a blind date with a man named Miles) over and over again.
She must discover how to break the cycle. Should she attempt to win back her ex-boyfriend Jack, should she pursue Miles, or should she do something else entirely?
14. A Christmas Star
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 38%
Born under the Christmas Star, Noelle believes she has the gift to perform miracles, so when conniving developer McKerrod threatens her peaceful life she and her friends determine to use this gift to thwart his plans and save their village.
15. A Very Murray Christmas
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 73%
Billy Murray rounds up an all-star crew for an evening of music and mischief in this irreverent twist on holiday variety shows.
16. All I Want For Christmas
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 59%
Ethan and Hallie O'Fallon are two siblings who wish that their divorced mom, Catherine, would reunite with their dad, Michael. As Christmas approaches, the kids manage to lock their mother's fiancé, Tony, in an ice cream truck and have him whisked off to New Jersey, all in an attempt to make their mom believe that she's been stood up.
The ploy works, and ex-husband Michael is waiting in the wings.
17. Angels In The Snow
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 31%
A bickering family heads to a cabin for the holidays and provides temporary shelter to another family, whose display of joy and respect makes them reexamine themselves.
18. Christmas Ranch
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 33%
When a rebellious teenager is sent to her grandmother's horse ranch for the Christmas holiday, she forms a bond with one of her grandmother's ponies and becomes determined to help her save the ranch from foreclosure.
19. Happy Christmas
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 75%
Anna Kendrick stars as an immature party girl who moves in with her brother's family to get over a breakup, throwing their lives out of whack.
20. Merry Kissmas
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 25%
A newly-single woman finds herself torn between two men after she kisses a handsome man on an elevator around the same time that her former boyfriend begins to treat her right.
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21. Noel
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 29%
The film centers around five strangers who are linked together — and who meet each other at separate times — by a series of events that take place on Christmas Eve in New York.
22. Radio City Christmas Spectacular
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 67%
The Christmas Spectacular is an annual musical holiday stage show presented at the iconic Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The 90-minute show features more than 140 performers and an original musical score and combines singing, dancing, and humor with traditional scenes.
The star performers are the women's precision dance troupe The Rockettes. Since the first version was presented in 1933, the show has become a New York Christmas tradition.
23. So This Is Christmas
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 50%
Ashley lives in the fast lane until she directs a play for underprivileged kids. She meets her soul mate, and they will live happily ever after... that is, unless her stepbrother gets her killed.
24. The Spirit Of Christmas
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 64%
A lawyer travels to Vermont to broker the sale of an Inn and learns that it is haunted by a man who cannot move on until the mystery of his death is solved.
Determined to help the charming spirit, she finds herself in an unlikely romance with him.
25. Tree Man
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 70%
Every holiday season, hundreds of Christmas tree sellers from across North America descend upon the streets of New York City to ply their trade. Having left their homes and families behind, they endure the adversity of a migrant's survival living out of their cars and vans. François, a "Tree Man" and father of three from Québec, returns to the same Manhattan street corner every year to deliver the magic of the season.
Tree Man explores François' journey and the relationships that sustain him with his customers, employees and the people of his adopted neighborhood.
Hannah Kern is an avid writer with a passion for delving deep into interpersonal relationships. When she isn’t researching new information for YourTango, you can find her making frappucinos at Starbucks or planning her next escape to the mountains. For more, follow her on Instagram.