While waiting to open your gifts with loved ones on Christmas Day, enjoy the holidays and laugh it up with these movies.
The holiday season is a particularly busy time for just about everyone. People are frantically shopping for last-minute gifts, waiting in long parking lines to enter the malls and spending time with their loved ones. There’s always something happening during this time of year. Amid all the hectic activity, people have their own ways of de-stressing and taking a moment for themselves so they can make it through the holiday season. One fun way to de-stress from all the craziness? Watching a Christmas comedy.
We’ve compiled a list of options, whether you’re watching a movie by yourself, or with family and loved ones. If this were a more general Christmas movie round-up, of course, we could have some debate about whether Die Hard should be on the list, but this isn’t one of those lists. This one is specifically looking at Christmas comedy movies. These movies range from fun R-rated action comedies to family-friendly timeless classics that can be watched with your young ones. Here are 25 Christmas comedies to pick from during this holiday season.
‘A Bad Moms Christmas’
Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn reprise their roles from 2016’s Bad Moms. This time, they’re dealing with their own mothers who are visiting for Christmas. The three new mothers are played by Christine Baranski, Cheryl Hines and Susan Sarandon.
Bad Santa’
This 2003 film will give you something to chew on if you’re looking for raunchiness in your comedy. Billy Bob Thornton plays a Santa Claus who travels the country with his elf and goes around robbing malls blindly until he meets an 8-year-old boy who helps him develop a change of heart. Bernie Mac stars alongside in the film, which was directed by Terry Zwigoff and written by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa. The Coen Brothers are executive producers as well. A sequel was released in 2016.
‘Candy Cane Lane’
Eddie Murphy stars in this 2023 film, directed by Reginald Hudlin. The film follows Murphy’s character making a deal with a Christmas elf to win the house-decorating contest on his neighborhood block. Candy Cane Lane — which also stars Tracee Ellis Ross, Jillian Bell, Thaddeus J. Mixon, Ken Marino, Trevante Rhodes, David Alan Grier and Nick Offerman — is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
‘A Christmas Story’
An holiday classic that is an annual must-watch, A Christmas Story is adapted from the 1966 book In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash, the third installment in the Parker Family saga. The film follows a young boy named Ralphie, played by Peter Billingsley, who really wants a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas, and his family during the holidays in 1939.
‘Christmas With the Kranks’
Directed by Joe Roth and with a screenplay from veteran screenwriter Chris Columbus, Christmas With the Kranks is based on the 2001 John Grisham novel Skipping Christmas. The cast is led by Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Aykroyd. The film follows a family who must contend with their daughter, played by Julie Gonzalo, unexpectedly returning home for the holidays after enrolling in the Peace Corps.