Watching Christmas movies is one of our favorite family traditions. It’s connection, nostalgia, and family fun all wrapped up in one! Check out our favorite movies to watch as a family during the Christmas season.
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Every Sunday (and most Fridays), you’ll find us watching a family movie while we eat supper in the living room. It’s one of our most-anticipated family “anchors” – routines, habits, and traditions we do on a regular basis to intentionally connect as a family and keep us from drifting apart. We look forward to it all week!
Starting the weekend after Thanksgiving, can you guess what theme our family movies suddenly take on? That’s right – Christmas! We watch a Christmas movie every weekend leading up to Christmas, and I love it.
While some of those movies come to our living room via streaming services, I’ve also been slowly-but-surely building our family Christmas movie collection. Each year, I get the kids a new Christmas movie that they get to open (along with a Christmas book or two, and, this year, a family game) on Christmas Eve. It’s become one of our family’s favorite Christmas traditions!
Related Post: 25 Family Christmas Traditions
If you would like to do something similar, or you simply want to expand your Christmas movie collection, here are the ones to get!
Favorite Family Christmas Movies
Watching Christmas movies is one of our favorite family traditions. It’s connection, nostalgia, and family fun all wrapped up in one! Following are our favorite movies to watch as a family during the Christmas season.
- The Polar Express — The book is absolutely worth getting, as well! Even if your kids are “too old” for picture books (which, I would argue, no one really is), it’s a keepsake!
- Home Alone – We enjoy them all, but the original 1 & 2 will always be our favorites!
- Elf
- A Christmas Story
- Miracle on 34th Street – We have the Mara Wilson version.
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the original version — my kids were NOT fans of the Jim Carrey version!) Make sure you get the book to go with it!
- The Grinch (2018) – We enjoyed this version, as well.
- The Santa Clause 1, 2, and 3
- Jingle All the Way – This movie is classic Arnie, and our kids loved it!
- A Charlie Brown Christmas – Who doesn’t love Charlie Brown?? It’s a true timeless classic!
- The Star – Is this movie Biblically accurate? No. But it sure is fun! (And since my kids know the real nativity story, I’m not worried about the small liberties taken in the movie.)
I do also LOVE White Christmas and It’s a Wonderful Life, but as of right now, no one else in my family will watch them with me. 😆
GIFT IDEA: Give an Amazon gift card to cover the cost of Amazon Prime so your recipient can watch all the Christmas movies they have to offer!
Family Christmas Movies Next On My List
The following Christmas movies are ones we haven’t yet watched as a family, but that I want to get next!
- Babes in Toyland
- National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
- Elliot: The Littlest Reindeer
- Christmas With the Kranks – I have vague memories of watching this when it first came out, and I’m pretty sure I enjoyed it.
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- 10 Mouthwatering Make-Ahead Breakfasts for Christmas Morning
Share your thoughts!