Christmas season is my favorite time of year for a number of reasons.  I love the cold weather.  I love breaking out sweaters and scarves.  And I really love snow.  

But what I look forward to the most every year are the Christmas movies.

I have a strict rule in my apartment (that really only applies to me, but that?s beside the point) that no Christmas movies can be watched until the day after Thanksgiving.  I feel very strongly about this.  Sure, it's entirely possible that the films listed below might be as great in July as they are in December, but I don't want to risk it.  There is something special about the Christmas season and these movies are an integral part of that.  I don't think it would be the same viewing experience watching these films in the dog days or summer.  It's nothing against the films themselves; rather it has to do with the cultural and emotional resonance that each one of these films has with me.

And that's why each December I look forward to pulling these films off the DVD shelf or setting my DVR to record me some holiday cheer.

My Top Ten Favorite Christmas Movies  

10. Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)
I will be the first to admit that the first film on my list is probably not, shall we say, "good."  Anytime you have a children's movie that stars Dudley Moore and a text-book scenery chewing, way over-the-top John Lithgow, you might have some problems if you are judging this movie from a modern adult perspective.  Here's the thing, though.  I don't care.  When this movie came out I was an 8 year old boy with a big imagination and a lot of faith in myths and legends.  If I remember correctly, the big marketing ploy for Santa Claus: The Movie was that Santa Claus was actually played by the real Santa Claus.  And just like with Christmas Eve reports of Santa's sleigh on the evening news, everyone dutifully played along with this dubious bit of casting news (it was a simpler time back then).  When my little brother and I went to the theater in 1985 we were dumb-founded by the prospect that we were actually watching the real St. Nick.  Now, maybe the Santa Claus in this movie was played by the actual Santa Claus or maybe he wasn't, I don't know.  But that's the beauty of the season; for just a little while each year I can return to that place in my memory.  A place where a little boy believes he is witnessing real magic on the silver screen.

9. Home Alone (1990)
Amidst all of the slapstick hijinks and the phenomenon that was Macauley Culkin, it's easy to forget that a pretty heart warming Christmas story lurks beneath the surface.  Nothing's more important on Christmas than family, and sometimes that's hard to understand as a kid.  Okay, it's almost always really hard for kids to understand that lesson.  Kevin McCallister thinks that he has hit the kid jackpot when his family accidentally leaves him behind on Christmas.  He's got the run of the house!  He can do what he wants!  There are no rules!  No big brothers to bother him!  And it's fantastically fun for a few days until he realizes that it's no great shakes being alone on Christmas with your entire family thousands of miles away.  Sure there's the whole war with two bumbling burglars that is much funnier than many people think is cool to admit, but at the heart of this film is the search for family during the holidays.  Also, not every creepy old loner in the neighborhood is a danger to little children; sometimes they are sweet old men.

8. A Christmas Story (1983)
Five years ago this film might have been in my top five - possibly even in my top three - but there is definitely something to be said for the negative effects of overexposure.  This film is a bona fide Christmas classic, one that we had on VHS when I was growing up. It was always a staple of the Kilpatrick household come December.  But then various networks (currently TBS) started showing it every year for 24 hours straight starting on Christmas Eve.  Now that I feel like I've seen it -- or snippets of it -- approximately 50,000 times, the excitement is not there for Ralphie and the gang like it used to be.  Still, it's hard to deny the cultural impact that this film has had on Christmas in America.  Hell, my family still quotes this film all the time.  And at the end of the day, despite having seen every scene of this film more times than I can accurately count, I can guarantee that at some point during this year's 24 hour marathon, I will flip over to TBS and laugh.  A lot.

7. Elf (2003)
This one has been climbing up the list in recent years.  There aren't many movies that mix laugh out loud hilarity and sugary sweetness with such deftness.  Much of the credit goes to the genius manchild, Will Ferrell.  With a lesser performer, his Buddy the Elf could have very easily come off as a buffoonish naïf, but Ferrell imbues Buddy with a powerful innate goodness.  All Buddy wants is for everyone to be happy and I totally buy it every time I look at Ferrell.  That's what the holidays are all about, right?  You want everybody to be happy and you want to be a better person than you are.  Buddy exemplifies those longings.  I'm also just a huge sucker for Will Ferrell.  The guy just makes me laugh, and sometimes it just takes a glance or a goofy smile and I'm done for.

6. Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Forget that insipid, uninspired, and totally unnecessary remake from 1994.  The original is the only version you, or I, or anyone needs.

5. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
I used to not even think about this one as a Christmas movie.  I mean, it clearly is, but it wasn't imprinted on my brain that way.  I used to think of It's a Wonderful Life in the same way I thought of Citizen Kane or Gone With the Wind, or The Wizard of Oz.  It always came up among those pantheons of film and it brought with it all the attendant baggage.  And then a few years ago I actually sat down and watched it all the way through from start to finish, something I hadn't done in at least a decade prior.  Not only is this a truly fantastic film, it's a fantastic Christmas film.  One thing that really stood out to me is how funny and sometimes bawdy it was (for some reason my subconscious mind has placed all old films into a conservative bubble, so when I see overt sexual innuendo in films like this I'm always shocked in the same way I am whenever I hear anyone my parents' age or older talk about sex).  There are some great lessons in this film that George Bailey has to learn the hard way, and thus the success of It's a Wonderful Life falls squarely on the shoulders of the incomparable everyman, Jimmy Stewart.  

4. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989)
Anyone with a big family knows that the holidays can be full of stress and madness just as much as it is good tidings and cheer.  No Christmas film encapsulates that more than this one.  The stress of bringing a big family together under your roof.  The stress of being the new patriarch.  The stress of not having enough money during the holidays.  All of this drives Clark W. Griswold, one of the all-time great film dads, to comedic distraction.  Chevy Chase is the butt of many jokes these days but the man has more than a handful of genuine comedic classics under his belt, which is more than most people in Hollywood can say.  And for my money, Christmas Vacation is one of my favorites.  It turns the holiday season into a madcap romp without ever losing its heart, which is absolutely essential part of any holiday film.  If I were ever to meet John Hughes I would thank him for giving The Griswolds -- that quintessential American family -- one more moment in the comedy sun.  

3. Love Actually (2003)
Let's face it, this film ends up on the list if only for giving the world Billy Mack and "Christmas is All Around."  But that's not all this film has going for it, not in the least.  The real strength of Love Actually is that because of its "spider-web of connections" anthology structure it runs the entire gamut of holiday emotions.  The joy found in family and friends.  The excitement of new love.  The pain of betrayal.  The ache of loneliness.  The determination to change your life.  The thought that at Christmastime, anything is possible.  Throughout the interweaving stories of Christmastime in London (and France, and, briefly, Wisconsin and Marseille), we are passengers on a hilarious and heartbreaking emotional roller coaster that perhaps sums the holiday season up the best of all.  I hadn't really had a "classic" Christmas movie to add to my list since 1990, and in 2003 I got two of them.

2. Scrooged (1988)
Ebenezer Scrooge's tale of Christmas redemption is so universally applicable that it can be set in the high stakes world of network television without missing a beat.  Despite its all-star cast this film is truly a star vehicle and Bill Murray's epic performance as Francis Xavier Cross catapults it into the comedy and Christmas movie stratosphere. Murray is just as much at home in the fast paced comedic scenes as he is in the devastatingly dramatic ones.  You don't often go into a Bill Murray comedy expecting to have your heart broken several times over, but you do here.  The tone often shifts on a dime in Scrooged, and to me that's one of the marks of a truly great film -- you can be laughing to the point of tears one minute and then crying for completely different reasons the next.  Man, when Calvin says "God bless us, everyone" it gets me.  Every time.  I saw this when it was originally out in theaters, and what a great experience that was.  The film ends with a group sing-a-long and Bill Murray breaking the fourth wall to implore the theater audience to join in.  And we did.  It was one of those great communal theater experiences that you can never get with DVD.  

1. Holiday Inn (1942)
Yes, technically speaking this film covers more than just Christmas.  All the biggies are here: Thanksgiving, July 4th, Easter, Lincoln's Birthday, Valentine's Day.  But really, it's all about Christmas.  Bing Crosby plays one half of America's most popular song and dance duo (the other half being Fred Astaire) who quits the big time showbiz life to run a quiet inn in rural Connecticut that only operates on holidays.  This movie was always one of my mom's favorites and as a result it was one we watched every year around Christmas.  It is so ingrained into my psyche that of all the movies on this list I cannot imagine a year without this one.  But it's not all pure nostalgia.  This was the film that introduced the world to the song "White Christmas" (and it also begat the chain of hotels called named after the film).  It also features a whole slew of fantastic musical numbers, one of the true highlights being Fred Astaire's 4th of July firecracker dance.  Still, the standout moments for me will always be the few times that "White Christmas" is sung, as love is first discovered and then rediscovered.  It's not officially Christmastime until I see Holiday Inn.

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