The 20 Best Holiday and Christmas Movies on Netflix Right Now

The holiday season seems to start around June, and Christmas movies become a mostly cozy affair for most of the year. While there is still some variety in seasonal fare, gone are the days when you saw one Christmas movie a year and it was either about a guy trying to jump off a bridge or a kid setting traps to kill two grown men who I want to kill him.

No, there are many more – many of them are available to stream on Netflix all year round. Here are some of the best deals the streamer is offering during the holiday season, whether it starts early or late. (And while this is a holiday movie selection, yes, it’s heavily skewed toward Christmas; Netflix’s current offerings focus heavily on Santa and little on everything else.)

Jingle Jungle: A Christmas Journey (2020)

As children’s parties go, this one is a little different in both style and pedigree. This is a true fantasy (rather than the more traditional romance variety) in which a toy manufacturer invents a living matador who fights for his right to individuality. With playwright David Talbert in the director’s chair and an all-black cast that includes Forest Whitaker, Keegan-Michael Key and Anika Noni Rose, the film has a blast in the colorful (and musical!) adventure.

Klaus (2019)

A charming, bespoke origin story for Santa based on nothing in particular, Klaus finds the lazy son of the postmaster general in 19th-century Norway exiled to a remote island town, where he is tasked with delivering 6,000 letters within a year so he won’t be cut off from the city . family happiness. When he arrives there, he discovers that the two main feuding families haven’t bothered to send him letters, but that an elderly widower can help him in a scheme he’s come up with to convince the town’s children to write letters in hopes of receiving toys in return – toys created by old Klaus in his quest to the family he never had. It’s all beautifully hand-animated and the emotion is genuine and tear-jerking, Pixar-style.

Holiday calendar (2018)

Kat Graham plays struggling photographer Abby Sutton, who receives an old advent calendar from her grandfather – she’s initially very underwhelmed by it, until a tiny pair of boots appears on the first day of the calendar, and later that day her friend Josh (Quincy Brown) ) ) gives her a real pair of shoes. As the calendar’s gifts seem to coincide with events that are actually happening, Abby begins to suspect that magic and romance are in the air. Ethan Peck ( Star Trek ) also stars.

Let It Snow (2019)

Not to be confused with Hallmark’s 2013 film Let It Snow , which is also a Christmas movie but not particularly (or at all) diverse. It’s not the 2020 snowboarding horror movie of the same name either – I’m saying there’s not much room for error when searching for this movie. Based on the novel by Maureen Johnson, John Green and Lauren Myracle, which interweaves three different stories, Let It Snow features a large and diverse cast of characters involved in holiday romances, both straight and queer, set in the same the same small town.

White Christmas (1954)

The setting is eerily familiar: Bob Wallace (Bing Crosby) and Phil Davis (Danny Kaye) team up with Betty (Rosemary Clooney) and Judy Haynes (Vera-Ellen) for a trip to Vermont, where they discover Bob and Phil’s old house. A wartime commander can’t keep his nice country inn afloat. What else to do but boost business by hosting the biggest Christmas variety show you’ve ever seen? Luckily, they got a little help from Irving Berlin, who wrote most of the songs, and Crosby’s now-classic title tune, written for Holiday Inn back in 1942.

Carol (2015)

The chemistry between Rooney Mara’s Teresa and Cate Blanchett’s Carol is palpable from the moment their eyes meet in a crowded department store during the 1952 Christmas holiday season – it’s the 1950s, and their attraction doesn’t dare speak its name, even in private. ok. (fortunately, in our time, queer phobia has been completely eradicated). Women suffer because of their love, but tears come less when things go wrong and when it seems that something might have gone wrong for them.

Operation Christmas Drop (2020)

Congressional aide Erica Miller (Kat Graham) drops everything for a mission to visit a coastal Air Force base and find reasons to protect it. She encounters the experienced pilot assigned to accompany her, who is heavily involved in one of the base’s pet projects: the annual airlift of supplies and gifts to various islands in Micronesia. You know where this is going, but that’s part of the fun.

Love Actually (2003)

Like it or not, there’s really no escaping the appeal of this new Christmas product. Beginning a few weeks before the holiday and counting down to the big day, the film brings together nine or ten (I can never keep track) love stories featuring such British familiars as Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Keira Knightley and Colin. Firth.

Tough Love (2021)

Natalie (Nina Dobrev) goes fishing for Christmas (fun!). A poor woman travels across the country to see a guy she met on an app and discovers that Josh (Jimmy O. Young) has been using photos of his friend Tag (Darren Barnett) all along. Things work out for her with Tag, but she soon has to decide which of the two guys she really has feelings for.

Scrooge: A Christmas Carol (2022)

It may not replace all the many, many early Dickens adaptations in your holiday heart, but this computer-animated musical version boasts some fun songs and a strong voice cast led by Luke Evans and Olivia Colman. It’s a little less scary and sentimental than many of the other options, so it might be a good way to introduce little kids to a holiday story.

Chicken Run (2000)

The holidays take place against the backdrop of this fun, avian take on The Great Escape …with a reminder that Christmas isn’t as much fun if you’re stuck on a farm laying eggs. The Aardman brothers’ edgy comedy has incredibly funny stop-motion animation and a lot of chicken. It remains the highest-grossing stop-motion animated film of all time. (Netflix also has a sequel in the pipeline, released two decades later, Chicken Little: Dawn of the Nugget , December 15.)

Holiday (2020)

Sloane (Emma Roberts) and Jackson (Luke Bracey) have figured out a way to deal with all the issues that arise (apparently?) when you’re single and show up at family gatherings: They’ll be each other’s platonic plus. – at holiday dinners. Would this movie be a holiday movie if there wasn’t anything other than friendship in the near future? It all turns into the climactic Thanksgiving dinner.

Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square (2020)

It’s the holidays, and Regina Fuller (Christine Baranski!) is heading home… to evict a bunch of people and sell some land to a shopping center developer. Naturally, she has a lot to learn, with the help of Jennifer Lewis and Dolly herself (who plays the role of a singing angel). Dolly wrote all the musical numbers and it’s all funny in the best way. The entire cast is several shots taller, as are the dance numbers choreographed by Debbie Allen.

Falling in Love with Christmas (2022)

Speaking of Christmas casting coups, this time Lindsay Lohan is back in the lead role after a decade. She plays a snotty heiress who loses her memory after a skiing accident and learns lessons about love and life while recovering at a ski lodge run by the down-to-earth Jake Russell (Chord Overstreet).

Call Me by Your Name (2017)

The story of love and sex featuring young, energetic Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and older Oliver (Armie Hammer) in Call Me by Your Name takes place mostly during the summer in northern Italy. However, there is a climactic scene at the end centered around Hanukkah, in which Elio takes inspiration from the holiday and decides to work through his grief. In terms of screen time, this is not so much, but it conveys the spirit of the holiday perfectly.

Princess Change (2018)

Stacy De Novo (Vanessa Hudgens) is a pastry chef from Chicago who travels to the fictional Belgravia to take part in a holiday baking competition. There she meets the Duchess, who is also the fiancée of the local prince (Sam Palladio) and who looks a lot like Stacy (surprise: they’re both played by Hudgens). They decide it would be interesting to see how the other half lives, and so they swap lives, unsurprisingly complicating the relationship with the prince. If you like this movie, the series continues with two more films that add another Hudgens.

A Christmas Prince (2017)

Another trilogy, you say? Look, sometimes you just want to crash on the couch and spend hours chatting pre-holiday. No problem: an American journalist (Rose McIver) heads to the fictional Aldovia in search of scoops. A case of mistaken identity leads to her being mistaken for the young princess’ mentor. And, of course, she soon begins to become close to the prince (Ben Lamb). It goes so well that it is being made into two more films. (Yes, the plots of all these films are almost identical, and this is a nice feature, not a bug.)

Noel’s Diary (2022)

It’s more of a comedy-drama in a holiday vein, so overall it’s less silly and a little less predictable than some other modern Christmas movies (pros or cons will largely depend on your mood). Writer Jake (Justin Hartley) returns home for Christmas to settle his late mother’s estate; he is just in time to meet Rachel (Barrett Doss), who is looking for information about her birth mother, who was Jake’s nanny.

Holiday Rush (2019)

In another drama, Holiday Rush , widowed hip-hop radio DJ Rush (Romany Malco) loses his job and returns to his old home with a plan to buy the local station where he got his start with his producer Roxy (Sonequa Martin- Green). ). Professional plans do not go entirely smoothly, but the couple discovers that their feelings may not only be about business.

Lonely Completely (2021)

Peter (Michael Urie) is working a very stressful Los Angeles-type job on his way home to New Hampshire for the holidays. Tired of wondering if he’s lonely, he decides to invite his best friend Nick (Philemon Chambers) to pose as more than just a roommate. A proven and reliable option! Complications arise when his mom (Kathy Najimy) introduces him to her fitness instructor, James (Luke MacFarlane), before learning about a fake boyfriend… who’s about to become a possible real boyfriend. The hilarious cast also includes Barry Bostwick and Jennifer Coolidge.