The best Christmas movies on Netflix, updated for 2025

Not content with being the world’s biggest streaming platform, The title sounds like a made-up sex act your eighth grade classmate once convinced you was real, but if you’re in the market for a ridiculous Christmas streamer, how are you not watching something called ‘Hot Frosty’? Indeed, it delivers the goods – not with the sex acts, but with an insane story about a young widow (Lacey Chabert) who uses a magic scarf to transform a snowman (Schitt’s Creek’s Dustin Milligan) into a flesh-and-blood hunk. Can a relationship bloom despite him having the body temperature of a Slurpee? Only one way to find out! Rated PG.

Or perhaps it should be called ‘A Portrait of Santa Claus as a Young Man’. In this British film, Jolly Old St Nick is just Nickolas, a boy with a talking mouse for a friend setting out on an adventure across a wintry landscape in search of his father, who ends up becoming a legend. Wide-eyed and imaginative, it’ll leave the young ones in the family with their mouths agape. Rated PG.

A pair of petty thieves, played by Olivia Holt and Connor Swindells, reluctantly team up to rob London’s largest department store during the Christmas rush. Might they end up stealing each other’s hearts as well? Hey, a holiday crime comedy is better than another romcom set in a weirdly jolly small town, and the screenplay, co-written by British crime novelist Abby McDonald, was well-regarded before Netflix scooped it up. Rating N/A.

Hulu beat Netflix in the race to release a queer-themed holiday romcom with the Kristen Stewart-Aubrey Plaza vehicle Happiest Season, but its reluctance to fully embrace the clichés of its genre relegated the movie to ‘passing seasonal buzz’ status. Single All the Way has no such problem, and as a result endures as the better option for an evergreen holiday watch. Peter (Michael Urie) and Nick (Philemon Chambers) are best friends who pretend to be a couple to appease the former’s family.. but would you believe they eventually start to develop real romantic feelings for each other? Get out of town! Rating PG.

This oddball origin story of Santa Klaus is the first animated feature from Netflix, and features Klaus (Oscar-winner J. K. Simmons), a large, bearded man with a knack for toymaking but who doesn't have much interest in children, Jesper (Jason Schwartzman), the worst postal carrier ever and Alva (Rashida Jones), a cynical teacher. They live in Smeerensburg, the unhappiest place on Earth. If it sounds like a grump-fest, well yes, that's the setup. But don't worry: Icy hearts melt, and even Smeerensburg can find joy. Rated PG. 
 

Alicia Silverstone steps up as the Netflix Christmas diva du jour in this holiday romcom, playing a small-town handywoman in the process of ‘consciously uncoupling’ from her workaholic doctor husband (Oliver Hudson). Aiming for an amicable split, the couple agree to spend one last Christmas together, a plan complicated when they both rebound with remarkable swiftness: he with Jameela Jamil, she with a himbo portrayed by a set of abs named Pierson Fodé. It’s cute! Rated PG-13.

What’s better than getting Kurt Russell to play Santa in a tale about two modern-age kids obsessed with capturing the Jolly Ol’ Fat Man on film? Getting Goldie Hawn to play Mrs Claus in the 2020 sequel, of course. These films are the heirs apparent to The Santa Clause, stripped of those films’ cynical trappings and offering a jolt of comfort and joy. Rated PG.

Against the backdrop of a Christmas Eve snowstorm, the lives of the teen residents in a small Illinois suburb — including a college-bound senior with a cancer-stricken mother, an incognito pop star, an aspiring DJ and a waitress with a secret — converge at a holiday house party. With young stars like Kiernan Shipka, Liv Hewson and Shameik Moore in the cast, plus Joan Cusack as the adult voice of wisdom, it’s a step above the standard Netflix holiday fare. Rated PG-13.

In this modern flip of the Christmas Carol formula, Christine Baranski is a Scroogey real estate developer planning to pave over her hometown and put up a shopping mall, until she’s visited by an apparition of Dolly Parton who uses the power of music to convince her to change her ways. Hey, if Dolly can’t do it, nothing will! You may think you’ve seen this all before, but c’mon: it’s Dolly Parton. You’ll watch it and love it, you old curmudgeon! Rated PG.

Did you know Richard Curtis had written a trilogy of children’s Christmas books? Netflix hopped right on the case of adapting them into a family animation that gives the Love Actually man’s comic sensibility a jolly family-friendly spin (ie: no f-bombs or posh blokes trying to get laid). With Brian Cox voicing Santa and Fiona Shaw, Jodie Whittaker and Bill Nighy also lending their voices, it’s a gentle tale about a bunch of kids making the best of it when the grown-ups get marooned on Christmas Eve. Like a ginger Santa, Ed Sheeran wrote a new yuletide ballad specially. Rated PG.

In the Murderville series, Will Arnett is a bumbling detective out to solve a series of formulaic murders-of-the-week. The twist? In each episode, he’s joined by a different ‘rookie investigator’, played by a celebrity guest star who isn’t privy to the script and is trying to figure out whodunit in real time. In this 60-minute Christmas special, a famous football player (Sean Hayes) is stabbed to death with a candy cane while dressed as Santa Claus, and it’s up to Arnett and three newbies – Jason Bateman, Maya Rudolph and Pete Davidson – to find the killer. Rated R.

It seems that every year the streaming gods gift us with a delicious cheese-log of a holiday romance starring an actor whose name alone makes you think, ‘Well, I gotta watch that.’ This season, it’s a Lindsay Lohan comeback vehicle about an amnesiac hotel heiress falling for a handsome outdoorsman, played by Glee star Chord Overstreet, aka ‘Great Value Chris Hemsworth’. Just the kind of inessential fluff Christmas is made for. Rating PG.

Part Prince and the Pauper, part The Parent Trap, this rom-com features Vanessa Hudgens as a humble baker who swaps places with the princess of a vaguely European country just in time for the holidays. A threequel debuts November 18, making this an enduring holiday series that will likely continue for as long as royalty remains unable to detect American accents and traces of flour and baking powder on gowns. Rated PG.

Netflix’s annual B-list holiday original for 2023 pits Heather Graham against Brandy Norwood in a passive-aggressive war of yuletide glee. When the two former college buddies serendipitously reunite over the holidays, the former sets out to prove that the latter’s life isn’t as perfect as her obnoxious yearly Christmas letters make it out to be. It doesn’t quite have the intrigue of last year’s Lindsay Lohan comeback vehicle, Falling For Christmas, but Graham and Brandy sounds like an onscreen pairing we never knew we needed until now. Rated PG.

There’s more plot stuffed into this Netflix Christmas movie than sage and onion into a turkey. Amber Moore (Rose McIver) is a young journalist who wants the scoop on Richard, the playboy prince of Aldovia, who is rumoured to be rejecting his ascent to the throne. Amber heads to Aldovia to investigate, only to get mistaken for young Princess Emily’s new tutor. Amber decides to play along, getting closer to Prince Richard, whom she falls in love with. Sequels A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding and A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby only crank up the craziness. Rated PG.

A body-swap comedy for the whole family! That works as both the tagline and a plot synopsis. As Christmas approaches, the Walker clan are too absorbed in their individual lives to enjoy each other’s company, until a rare cosmic event causes them to trade consciousnesses. Ed Helms and Jennifer Garner are the parents, while A Minecraft Movie’s Emma Myers and Good Boys’ Brady Noon play their kids. Rated PG.

Irish author Frank McCourt’s bleak Angela’s Ashes doesn’t exactly scream holiday cheer, but this adaptation of the author’s unlikely children’s book Angela and the Baby Jesus proves that the holidays can brighten even the saddest of real-life tales. Told via animation that exudes a hearth-like radiance, it’s a tale of familial love’s ability to warm even the coldest of winters. The unlikely charmer was cheery enough to garner a sequel, Angela’s Christmas Wish, which is also available and worth a watch. Rated G.

A woman (Nina Dobrev) flies across the country to surprise the guy she met online for Christmas, only to discover that he’s not the ruggedly handsome bro from his dating profile photos but Silicon Valley’s Jimmy O Yang. Yep, she’s been catfished. But rather than jumping on the next plane home in horrified disgust, she agrees to let her faux beau hook her up with the dude she thought she was texting, who happens to live in town. It’s a little weird, and you can clearly see where it ends up from the synopsis alone, but it has a certain ditzy charm ideal for this most ditziest time of the year. Rated MA.

Lindsay Lohan is the Mariah Carey of Netflix, the diva the streamer thaws out at the end of November to signify that the holiday season has truly begun. In her latest holiday guilty pleasure, La Lohan and some guy from Pretty Little Liars play exes forced to spend Christmas together when they discover their respective new partners are related. Will you remember the movie exists a year from now? Absolutely not. Will it scratch the basic part of your brain that loves Ugg boots, peppermint lattes and Michael Bublé? Certainly will. Rated PG-13.

She’s a Grinch-y single mom who detests the concept of Christmas. He’s a grown adult man who isn’t just obsessed with the holiday but believes fervently in the existence of the literal Christian Santa Claus. Can they find common ground… and maybe even love? The key to a good-bad holiday romcom is a touch of insanity, and I Believe in Santa has more than a mere sprinkling of it. Imagine Elf if Will Ferrell was just a lawyer who wears a lot of festive vests and was presented as a legitimate romantic lead. Rated PG.