The 15 coziest Christmas movies to stream this holiday season (and where to watch them)
- - The 15 coziest Christmas movies to stream this holiday season (and where to watch them)
Randall ColburnNovember 8, 2025 at 7:30 PM
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Everett, Jim Henson Co., Focus Features
'White Christmas'; 'Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas'; 'The Holdovers'
Christmas is as much about memories and tradition as it is celebration and gift-giving. It's a holiday that brings its own stresses, but it's also important to carve out some time for the season's cozier pleasures — a heavy blanket, a hot cup of cocoa, and a movie that reminds you of simpler times.
Below, we've assembled 15 movies that deliver the cozy factor, from vintage soul-warmers like It's a Wonderful Life to stop-motion Rankin/Bass classics to more recent additions to the Christmas canon, like The Holdovers and Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.
Light a candle, roast some chestnuts, and scroll down for Entertainment Weekly's favorite cozy Christmas movies.
01 of 15
The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
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James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan in 'The Shop Around the Corner'
These days, Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner is mostly remembered as the inspiration for You've Got Mail, the maddening Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan rom-com that's become something of a Christmas classic in its own right. Both movies follows ostensible rivals who don't realize they've also been communicating as anonymous pen pals.
You've Got Mail sparkles thanks to Hanks and Ryan's chemistry, but there's more depth and specificity in The Shop Around the Corner, which stars James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as feuding sales clerks in Budapest leather goods store, a shop so cozy you can practically smell the rich, earthy leather.
"Hanks in Mail is lovable, engaging, deeply sympathetic. In short, he’s not a heck of a lot more complex than his golden retriever," reads an EW ode of the film from 1999. "Stewart in Shop is bitter and hopeful, a jerk and a mensch, scared and serene — all the things a smart, struggling young guy on the cusp of love would be."
It goes on to call Shop "one of the most perceptive movies ever made about the workplace," adding, "It sees employees as members of a fractious family and acknowledges that each has a story worth telling (the focus on two potential lovers seems mere happy accident)."
Where to watch The Shop Around the Corner: Amazon Prime (to rent)
02 of 15
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Everett
'It's a Wonderful Life'
It's a Wonderful Life's dominance as the alpha and omega of holiday classics is sort of funny when you consider how much of it is about shattered dreams, despair, and resignation. But isn't the hope for angelic intervention and a renewed perspective a gift unto itself? Speaking with EW a few years back, stars like Dolly Parton, Claire Danes, and Mary Steenburgen all cited it as one of their favorite holiday movies.
The truth, of course, is that It's a Wonderful Life's story isn't remembered so fondly for its story so much as its cathartic ending, which can't help but make one grateful for whoever they're currently cuddling.
“It fully embraces both the love and humor and compassion, all the positive elements of Christmastime,” film historian Jeremy Arnold told EW in 2020. “But it does not shy away from the darker aspects of the season, so it feels very honest."
Where to watch It's a Wonderful Life: Amazon Prime
03 of 15
Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection
Natalie Wood and Edmund Gwenn in 'Miracle on 34th Street'
Christmas is that time of year that allows even the most jaded adults to feel like kids again — if only for a moment.
The holiday classic that perhaps best encapsulates that sensation is Miracle on 34th Street, George Seaton's 1947 film about a Macy's department store Santa who turns out to be none other than Kris Kringle. (He's even forced to prove it in a courtroom.)
“To see Santa Claus proven as real? It’s a great scene," said an EW editor in 2016. “Everyone wants to see their childhood continue. The film allows us to believe… and have a happy ending where yes, Santa is real and the world is a nice place.”
Where to watch Miracle on 34th Street: Amazon Prime
04 of 15
White Christmas (1954)
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Rosemary Clooney, Danny Kaye, Bing Crosby, Vera-Ellen in 'White Christmas'
VistaVision, a widescreen film format renowned for producing sharp images suited for the big screen, is making a comeback due to recent successes like The Brutalist (2024) and One Battle After Another (2025). The first movie to be filmed in VistaVision? White Christmas, Michael Curtiz's ecstatic musical about a song-and-dance duo working to save a Vermont lodge with the help of two mellifluous sisters.
More than 70 years later, White Christmas still looks gorgeous, positively popping with berry reds, snowy whites, and minty greens. It's as easy on ears as it is on the eyes, with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen crooning through the title song, as well as enduring hits like "Sisters" and "Count Your Blessings (Instead of Sheep)."
Where to watch White Christmas: YouTube (to rent)
05 of 15
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)
RANKIN/BASS PRODUCTIONS
'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer'
The stop-motion spectacles of Rankin/Bass are the platonic ideal of Christmas coziness. And no list of holiday musts is complete without Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, one of the earliest creations of the beloved production company.
Is it less polished than many of the Christmas specials that followed? A little longer in the tooth? Oh, sure. But, for many, it was the first movie to crack open the myth of Santa Claus and build an entire world around his workshop.
It helps, too, that it's so peculiar. All those Misfit Toys, strange cadences, and ramshackle songs lodge themselves in young, impressionable minds in such a way that makes them impossible to forget (and enticing to revisit).
Where to watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: Amazon Prime (to buy)
06 of 15
The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974)
RANKIN/BASS PRODUCTIONS
The Heat Miser in 'The Year Without a Santa Claus'
Like Rudolph, the 1974 special The Year Without a Santa Claus folds new characters into Rankin/Bass' Christmas universe while also telling an entirely new story. This time, Mrs. Claus (Shirley Booth) recruits a motley crew of elves and reindeer to give a grumpy, spurned Santa (Mickey Rooney) a break after he becomes disillusioned by the world's lack of love and appreciation.
Heat Miser (George S. Irving) and Snow Miser (Dick Shawn), two of Rankin/Bass' most inspired creations, steal the show with their jaunty song-and-dance routine, which still hits all these years later.
Where to watch The Year Without a Santa Claus: Amazon Prime (to rent)
07 of 15
Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas (1977)
Jim Henson Studios
'Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas'
Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas is among Jim Henson and Co.'s most evocative and immersive creations, a heartwarming tale set on tree-lined riverbanks, icy ponds, and wood-paneled shanties shot with such flair that it's easy to forget you're looking at miniatures.
It follows a sweet otter named Emmet (Jerry Nelson) and his widowed mother, Alice (Marilyn Sokol), each as fuzzy and huggable as can be. They want to surprise each other with Christmas gifts amid hard times, and join a talent show with the hopes of securing a cash prize. Unfortunately, they'll have to square off against the Riverbottom Gang's gaggle of weasels, snakes, and muskrats (who somehow manage to still be so dang cute).
Themes of community and sacrifice abound, as do bluegrass ditties penned by Paul Williams.
Where to watch Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas: Amazon Prime
08 of 15
A Christmas Story (1983)
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'A Christmas Story'
You'd be forgiven for being a little sick of A Christmas Story, Bob Clark's beloved tale about 9-year-old Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) and the Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle he so fiercely desires. For years, TBS and TNT have made it inescapable with 24-hour marathons beginning on Christmas Eve.
Give it a break for a year or two, though, and you'll return to find it fits just as snug as it used to, its tale of Midwestern holiday mishaps laying over your shoulders like that threadbare sweater you can't bear to thrift.
"One of the best things about A Christmas Story," EW previously observed, "has always been its lack of holly-strewn sentiment: the light that shines brightest in it is not the standard glow of lovingly-strung Christmas bulbs, but the wanton plastic leg lamp, wrapped in fishnet and saucily topped with bordello tassels, that Ralphie Parker’s dad so proudly displays in the family-room window."
It's amusing how that leg lamp, once so scandalous, has now become as common a Christmas decoration as snow globes and nutcrackers.
Where to watch A Christmas Story: HBO Max
09 of 15
Metropolitan (1990)
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The ensemble cast of 'Metropolitan'
You won't find Santa, Rudolph, or the Grinch in Metropolitan, the directorial debut of refined filmmaker Whit Stillman. Christmas lingers in the periphery of this "identity comedy," which centers on the relationships, banter, and after-hours arguments of upper-crust New Yorkers on vacation from college during the holiday.
Much of this lovely, cerebral film unfolds in a cozy Manhattan high-rise, a Christmas tree twinkling in the background as snow falls outside. One memorable scene takes us to a sumptuous Mass on Christmas Eve, “Come All Ye Faithful” filling the vast cathedral.
Traditional holiday themes of generosity, salvation, and tradition are mostly absent here. Rather, Metropolitan evokes the youthful experience of being home, avoiding family, and clinging to friends during the holiday break, when responsibility remains over the horizon and your whole life is still ahead of you.
Where to watch Metropolitan: HBO Max
10 of 15
Mrs. Santa Claus (1996)
Hallmark Entertainment / Courtesy: Everett Collection
Angela Lansbury in 'Mrs. Santa Claus'
Angela Lansbury stars in 1996's Mrs. Santa Claus, a mostly-forgotten gem that first aired on CBS in 1996. A story of female independence, it finds Lansbury's titular wife mapping out a new, more efficient route for Santa (Charles Durning, who played the gift-giver five times in his career). To test the route, she leaves the North Pole, only to be waylaid by a storm in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1910.
There, Mrs. Claus becomes involved in the women's suffragette movement, helping to organize a strike demanding labor reforms (and help some locals find love).
The legendary Jerry Herman (Hello, Dolly!, Mame) composed the whimsical score, which exudes Christmas cheer across the film's many song and dance numbers, many of which unfold in the snow-crusted thoroughfares of its charmingly vintage vision of New York City.
Where to watch Mrs. Santa Claus: Tubi
11 of 15
One Special Night (1999)
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Julie Andrews in 'One Special Night'
There's no shortage of snowed-in romances out there, but you might've missed Roger Young's made-for-TV romance One Special Night. Julie Andrews and James Garner, whose screen history dates back to the 1960s, star as widowers who spark a late-in-life connection while trapped in an abandoned cabin during a winter storm.
It's a familiar premise that's elevated by the chemistry of its leads. You may know where it's all heading, but that doesn't blunt the impact of its climactic moment, which unfolds on Christmas Day. Andrews and Garner deftly convey years of love and loss, as well as the difficulties and rewards of moving on.
Where to watch One Special Night: Tubi
12 of 15
Polar Express (2004)
Warner Bros
'The Polar Express'
This one's for the Zoomers, as the uncanny motion-capture animation of Robert Zemeckis' The Polar Express creeped out many older audience members. But kids love this movie, and, even if it creeps you out, it nevertheless remains an "intricate, exploratory, indefinably askew interpretation," as articulated by EW back in 2007.
Set on Christmas Eve, this adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg's beloved 1985 children's book follows a young boy whose waning belief in Santa Claus is reinvigorated after hopping on a magical train to the North Pole. It's bursting with warmth and wonder (there's even a song about hot chocolate.) And Tom Hanks, a repository of good vibes, plays no less than five different roles (including Santa Claus).
Where to watch The Polar Express: HBO Max
13 of 15
Christmas, Again (2014)
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Kentucker Audley in 'Christmas, Again'
The tragically under-seen Christmas, Again, written and directed by Charles Poekel, is a subtle film about Noel (Kentucker Audley), a newly-single Christmas tree salesman whose brief encounter with Lydia (Hannah Gross) brings a spark of magic into the lives of these troubled souls.
It's a simple story that about small joys, like slotting holly into a wreath or how a Christmas tree can light up a child's eyes.
Where to stream Christmas, Again: Cineverse
14 of 15
The Holdovers (2023)
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Dominic Sessa, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, and Paul Giamatti in 'The Holdovers'
Everyone's a little sad in The Holdovers, Alexander Payne's charmingly sour comedy about a student stuck at his New England boarding school over the holidays with only his grouchy professor (Paul Giamatti) and the school cook (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) for company. And that's appropriate; coziness and sorrow are not mutually exclusive.
"The film's three lost souls all need someone, and as their secrets trickle out, they become the ragtag family they so desperately crave. Even if only for a little while," reads EW's review. "The holidays are inherently melancholy for so many — the season's emphasis on togetherness simultaneously highlighting our most painful losses. It is through this bittersweet relationship with the season that these characters connect."
Where to watch The Holdovers: Amazon Prime (to rent)
15 of 15
Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (2024)
IFC Films
'Christmas Eve in Miller's Point'
The exhilarating Christmas Eve in Miller's Point wastes no time in assembling its massive cast of mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins, in-laws, and pet lizards. An ensemble piece in the truest sense, Tyler Taormina's film captures the joys and exhaustions of holiday gatherings via a Long Island family's annual Christmas Eve shindig.
There are a few through lines here — an ailing grandma and a bit of teenage rebellion — but the film feels most alive when Taormina shakes up the little snow globe he's populated and lets his characters bounce off of each other.
Come for the holly-strewn chaos, but stay for Michael Cera and Gregg Turkington's amusing turns as a pair of straight-faced cops.
Where to watch Christmas Eve in Miller's Point: AMC+
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