Which of these top 20 Yuletide flicks compiled by AMC tugs at your heartstrings — or makes you laugh — the hardest?
1. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Decking the halls and other traditions are all colossal failures for the Griswold family — riotous because it hits close to home.
2. Elf
It may star Will Ferrell as a dim-witted elf, but the movie’s payoff is old-fashioned, familiar, and welcome.
3. Home Alone
A game changer for the Christmas-movie category: it has action, like a zip line to the neighbors’ house.
4. How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Boris Karloff’s dulcet baritone lends sinister charm to everyone’s favorite Who hater in this short, sweet Christmas special.
5. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
This sixties stop-motion-animation movie is impossibly cute, right down to Sam the Snowman.
6. A Charlie Brown Christmas
Charlie Brown sets out to find the true meaning of Christmas in this animated anti-commercialism classic.
7. It’s a Wonderful Life
Whether or not you have your own guardian angel hovering, the lesson here is that it’s not money that makes you rich.
8. Miracle on 34th Street
Uplifting without being cloying. It’s no wonder that this movie is a much-beloved holiday chestnut.
9. A Christmas Story
This comedy satisfies two sets of audiences: kids (Ralphie gets his BB gun) and parents (it does exactly what they warned him it would).
10. The Santa Clause
Tim Allen deconstructs Saint Nick — and reconstructs his waistline — as a hapless Santa in training.
11. Frosty the Snowman
This holiday staple features one of the most memorably catchy Christmassy theme songs ever.
12. A Christmas Carol
George C. Scott plays Scrooge in this classic made-for-TV version of the Charles Dickens holiday tale.
13. White Christmas
The follow-up to Holiday Inn is once again full of Irving Berlin tunes, with Bing Crosby providing the vocals. What’s not to love?
14. Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas
It’s rather hard to say who’s the real star of this funny live-action version: is it Jim Carrey or Dr. Seuss?
15. Holiday Inn
Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire celebrate a year’s worth of holidays, against a steady flow of Irving Berlin tunes.
16. The Muppet Christmas Carol
The Muppet adaptation of the classic story is fun, sweet, and definitely appropriate for the whole family.
17. Scrooged
The Bill Murray renaissance began with his turn as ultimate crank Frank Cross. A Solid Gold Dancers cameo helps get the lesson across.
18. Christmas in Connecticut
A war hero has Christmas dinner with the Martha Stewart-esque Barbara Stanwyck (who actually can’t cook) in this holiday farce.
19. The Nightmare Before Christmas
Tim Burton and Henry Selick’s enchanting tale has all the familiar, er, bones of a holiday classic — love, redemption, and Santa.
20. Bad Santa
Full of expletives and sexual innuendos, Bad Santa upends the feel-good tradition