Best Christmas Movies – Methodology
I searched the Internet for lists of best Christmas movies of all time. Criteria included the movies being ranked, not just listed, and covering all time, not just a decade or Hallmark. The lists were generally created by groups, whether teams or committees or based on general public voting (like Ranker.com).
I was able to find 38 lists. I took the 38 lists and added all their content into a spreadsheet, noting the rank of every film. The total number was over 1300 including all the repeats. I averaged the rankings each movie got and divided that average by the number of lists that movie was on. The lowest score meant a high ranking average on many lists.
The movies that were on the most lists (out of 38) were:
- It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) – 37
- Home Alone (1990) – 37
- Elf (2003) – 36
- National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989) – 34
- Love Actually (2003) – 34
- Die Hard (1988) – 32
- The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) – 32
- Miracle on 34th Street (1947) – 31
- The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) – 31
- A Christmas Story (1983) – 30
- Scrooged (1988) – 30
- White Christmas (1954) – 30
- The Santa Clause (1994) – 30
Here are links to the lists I used along with dates the lists were created:
- PureWow 2020 – 23 Nov 2020
- CBS News – 20 Nov 2020
- Thrillist – 18 Nov 2020
- Rotten Tomatoes – 16 Nov 2020
- Ranker.com – 9 Nov 2020
- Esquire.com – 2 Nov 2020
- List Film.uk – 27 Oct 2020
- TimeOut London – 22 Oct 2020
- MerchDope – 7 Oct 2020
- Reader’s Digest – 18 Apr 2020
- Independent.co.uk – 25 Dec 2019
- Consequence of Sound – 24 Dec 2019
- BroBible – 13 Dec 2019
- New York Post – 11 Dec 2019
- Fame 10 – 3 Dec 2019
- Stacker.com – 3 Dec 2019
- Today.com – 27 Nov 2019
- Looper.com – 25 Oct 2019
- DigitalSpy – 12 Feb 2019
- Music Magpie – 1 Jan 2019
- Ultimate Movie Rankings – 24 Dec 2018
- her.ie – 24 Dec 2018
- Mirror.co.uk – 21 Dec 2018
- Radio Times – 19 Dec 2018
- MovieFone – 13 Dec 2018
- SmoothRadio – 28 Nov 2018
- Newsweek – 26 Nov 2018
- Rare.us – 23 Nov 2018
- USA Today – 23 Nov 2018
- Entertainment Weekly – 13 Nov 2018
- PureWow – 8 Nov 2018
- IndieWire – 22 Dec 2017
- TooFab – 19 Dec 2017
- Empire Online – 22 Dec 2016
- Medium.com – 15 Dec 2016
- Urban List – 9 Dec 2016
- Business Insider – 24 Dec 2015
- DailyEdge – 18 Dec 2015