There’s no time of the year more packed with traditions than the holidays. A dish you make, a place you visit, a festive activity you do every year — these are the things that make the season all that it is. And one of the coziest of these annual rituals has to be queuing up your favorite Christmas classic for a nice little holiday stream.
Whether you’re putting on one of the time-honored films that your family has loved for decades or queuing up a newer addition to the Christmas canon that you’ve recently adopted as your own end-of-year tradition, there’s no wrong way to enjoy a holiday movie. Here are options currently available to stream, all offering different twists on what it means to be a Christmas classic. Happy streaming! (And Merry Christmas!)
Though not strictly a Christmas movie, Todd Haynes’ exquisite drama (based on Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt) is inextricably linked to the season, its central romance beginning during the holidays in 1952. When the elegant housewife Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett) goes to a department store to buy her daughter a Christmas present, she meets the young aspiring photographer Therese (Rooney Mara), a salesgirl wearing a Santa hat. Their forbidden love blossoms quietly, complicated by the era’s social mores and Carol’s contentious ongoing divorce, in a modern classic from a celebrated auteur (whose latest, May December, is streaming now).
A Christmas classic gets a lively update every year with legendary director-choreographer Debbie Allen’s annual production of her Hot Chocolate Nutcracker. Allen’s inventive staging reimagines the magical tale through a variety of music and dance styles in lieu of the traditional Tchaikovsky-backed ballet. She puts the spotlight on young dancers rather than relegating them to party-scene extras while the adults steal the show. Oliver Bokelberg’s Shondaland-produced Dance Dreams documentary chronicles the behind-the-scenes process of one year’s production, from casting through rehearsals to the big show.
Who’s more of a classic than Dolly Parton? The country superstar’s Christmas on the Square — directed and choreographed by Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker mastermind Debbie Allen and featuring original songs by Parton — came out in 2020, but it’s got holiday traditions written into its DNA. With hints of It’s a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol sprinkled throughout, the film stars Christine Baranski (a Christmas icon herself) as a wealthy businesswoman who plans to evict her whole town at Christmastime, to sell the land; Parton plays the feisty angel whose appearance makes her reflect on her decision.
You want a Christmas classic story? Why not go back to the one that started it all? D.J. Caruso’s 2024 biblical epic Mary depicts the Nativity story through the perspective of one of its central figures. The coming-of-age film stars Noa Cohen as Mary through the immaculate conception and birth of Jesus, and follows her and Joseph (Ido Tako) as they flee the violence of King Herod (Anthony Hopkins) with their newborn son.
No detail was overlooked in the production of Paul Thomas Anderson’s exquisite Phantom Thread, and that includes the elegant, period-specific decorations on display for its glamorous holiday scenes. And while the whole film doesn’t take place at the end of the year, it does convey a wintry sort of romance throughout. Daniel Day-Lewis stars (in his final role before his retirement) as the revered fictional fashion designer Reynolds Woodcock (whose exacting demeanor and refined aesthetic were loosely inspired by designer Charles James), who finds a muse and then a lover in Alma (Vicky Krieps), a waitress.
