Every winter, the Netflix holiday universe expands exponentially, adding new stories of happenstance romance and mistletoe make-outs to its stable of original movies. There’s plenty of family-friendly fare, like Jingle Jangle or The Christmas Chronicles, and even more of the cozy Christmastime romantic comedies we love to watch this time of year.
But which of the said rom-coms is the most festive of all? We decided to put them to the test, ranking them with a very refined and calculated evaluation process: snowiness (we’re aware this is just Northern Hemisphere December imagery, but pop culture has enshrined winter as the one true holiday season), coziness (coziness is a state of mind, but increases with warm drinks and fuzzy blankets), decor (ornaments, wreaths, bows, lights, mistletoe, etc.), and grinch-like transformation (i.e., a grump who discovers holiday cheer).
All of these elements combined make the “holiday cheer factor.” The HCF is an incredibly specific number based on careful analysis and super-scientific calculations (aka biased personal judgment). We should also say that in the case of all of these movies, the holiday in question is primarily Christmas — with a little bit of New Year’s thrown in for good measure. Below, find the unofficial official ranking of Netflix holiday romances according to their festive flair — and keep an eye out for all-new Netflix original holiday romance movies coming this year!
Taylor Jacobson (Alexandra Breckenridge) is a single mom trying to find a way to afford her daughter’s snowboarding camp. She realizes she could get a discount if she were an employee of the ski resort. How hard could a short seasonal job be? Well, the job would require pretending to be a man so she could play Santa Claus — so, hilariously hard. Taylor’s friends help with her transformation, and her plan seems to be going well. That is, until she discovers that Matthew Layne (Ryan Eggold), a man who’s expressed romantic interest in Taylor, is also the resort manager. Will he see through her jolly old facade, or can she keep up the ruse despite her blossoming feelings?
Holiday Cheer Factor: 3.0
Listen, there’s a lot of castle in this story. A Castle for Christmas centers around romance author (Brooke Shields) who revisits her Scottish roots and ends up buying a castle (and falling in love). But, if we’re being honest, there’s not much Christmas, which means that, although it’s the exact kind of rom-com that can cure your winter blues, it unfortunately does not rank high on the scale of festive flair.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 3.2
This is less of a holiday rom-com than a “divorcée gets her groove back” film, but either way there are elephants, beautiful Zambian landscapes and Kristin Davis as said divorcee — plus Rob Lowe as her handsome bush pilot object of affection. And some Christmas and New Year’s action, too.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 4.1
While Christmas is included in this film — it begins around Yuletide, when singletons Sloane (Emma Roberts) and Jackson (Luke Bracey) agree to be each other’s plus-one to various holiday events throughout the year. It isn’t actually about the holiday season at all, but rather... all holidays. Points for the festivities, but not that many.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 4.2
The playboy son of a San Francisco real estate developer heads to wine country to buy a farmer’s ranch, but thanks to a case of mistaken identity, the two would-be enemies end up falling in love instead. The Christmas of it all is tangential to the small-town drama, but there’s a sweet love story at the center.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 4.3
Palm trees with Christmas lights are almost as festive as evergreens, which bumps this warm-weather story a little higher up the list. A tightly wound congressional aide (Kat Graham, in her first appearance on this list) falls for a hot local Air Force captain (Alexander Ludwig) while they plan his annual Christmas operation to bring holiday cheer to local residents in Guam. A fully realistic Christmas scenario, if you ask me.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 5.5
Romany Malco is widowed radio DJ Rashon “Rush” Williams, who’s forced to downsize — along with his four children — into his aunt’s house during the holidays, thanks to a corporate takeover of his radio station. But he and his producer, Roxy (Sonequa Martin-Green), invest in a new station — and fall in love. There’s snow and coziness, plus some rom-com tropes, which lands this solidly in the upper-middle quadrant of the list.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 6.5
If a little burlesque is your idea of a happy holiday, then this is the Christmas movie for you. An out-of-work Broadway dancer, Ashley (Britt Robertson), returns home to save her family’s small-town bar and music venue. To raise money, she turns to what she knows best: dance. Recruiting some local hunks, including handyman Luke (Chad Michael Murray), she puts together a holiday dance revue and stirs up some scandal in the town while raising the money they need. Most of the holiday cheer is in the form of Christmas decorations and melting snow; then again, if a few shirtless men get you feeling the spirit of the season, you may rank it higher.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 6.6
This YA feature is more like a series of interconnected vignettes than a full-fledged rom-com, but there is plenty of romance to be had in this story of a group of Illinois teens on a white winter day. It’s filled with snow (which, you know, is in the title), but it’s more of a winter vibe than a holiday-forward one, so it’s getting a mid-festive rating from us.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 6.7
Three loyal sons scramble to find wives they can bring home to their dying mother by Christmas as she plans the most gorgeous celebration ever. There’s not much snow in Lagos, but there is a lot of Christmas cheer in this family-friendly holiday film. We’re into this one.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 6.8
A spoiled heiress (Eliza Taylor) learns the true meaning of Christmas when she’s stranded in a small town called Snow Falls. This is a paint-by-numbers that uses every trope a Christmas rom-com should involve, but it gets points deducted because of the obviously fake foam snow (sorry, we can tell you shot this in July) and the fact that this grown adult woman doesn’t know how to pack for literally two days away. Come on.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 6.9
This film starts with a healthy dose of Christmas with a holiday going-away party … which ends in a breakup. A decade after their split, childhood sweethearts Avery (Lindsay Lohan) and Logan (Ian Harding) are spending the holidays at the family home of their significant others, who happen to be siblings. The two scramble to keep their shared history a secret, especially with a hard-to-please mother-in-law (Kristin Chenoweth) causing further stress. Points for all the festivities like Christmas tree shopping, secret Santa gifting, a hilarious Christmas mass debacle, and an amazingly awkward Christmas night where more than a few secrets are spilled. But a few points off for a total lack of snow.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 7.0
An alternate title for this movie could be Catfishing at Christmastime, seeing as the story follows an unlucky-in-love columnist who spontaneously flies to upstate New York to meet her online beau — only to find out that he’s used fake photos. There’s plenty of seasonally appropriate activity in this one: snow, caroling, sweaters and tree-trimming galore, giving it a very respectable HCF number.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 7.1
Sophia Martin (Olivia Holt) is broke and working a thankless job at a posh department store to help fund her mother’s medical care. Nick O’Connor (Connor Swindells), the former security consultant for the store, is now banned after being wrongfully convicted of stealing from the store and its greedy owner, Maxwell Sterling (Peter Serafinowicz). When Nick taps into the store’s cameras, he sees Sophia stealing from the lost and found. He thinks he’s found an ally as motivated as he is to steal a much larger sum from the store. Nick and Sophia make an unlikely criminal duo who may be exactly right for each other … as long as they don’t get caught.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 7.2
A sleeper contender in the holiday cheer department is this sweet little rom-com (slash rom-dram) about a struggling photographer (Kat Graham, again) who inherits a fortune-telling antique holiday advent calendar. In the process of using it for the first time, she understands what Christmas magic is all about — and realizes she should be dating her hot best friend, too.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 7.9
Vanessa Hudgens apparently knows her way around a holiday romance, because she’s got several on this list. Here, she stars as a woman who encounters a real-life medieval knight just ahead of Christmas (again, these titles are pretty much just telling you the plot). There’s snow, a Christmas banquet and a hot time traveler who convinces our heroine of the power of love. What more do you need?
Holiday Cheer Factor: 8.0
Lindsay Lohan leads this lost-memory comedy, playing wealthy heiress and wannabe influencer Sierra, who has a ski accident that leaves her with amnesia. Enter Jake (Chord Overstreet), a single dad running the Northstar Lodge, an inn that looks as though Christmas flooded every inch with ornaments and warmth in a town that could double for Santa’s village. As Sierra learns to fend for herself after a lifetime of spoiled treatment, she finds Jake and his daughter represent a lifestyle she didn’t even know existed. The sheer amount of holiday imagery plus the simmering romance make for a quintessential festive film.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 8.1
Baking is technically a seasonally agnostic activity, but it’s actually extremely Christmas-centric if you really think about it. (Christmas cookies are literally their own genre of baked goods.) So the fact that this mistaken identity caper (so many Vanessa Hudgenses) is set during the holidays — in Europe, which is also somehow an extremely Christmassy location — and its climax occurs during a baking competition gives it extra holiday cheer points. (And there are two more movies that follow!)
Holiday Cheer Factor: 8.2
You’ll get plenty of rom and com in this 2021 original, which stars Michael Urie and Philemon Chambers as BFFs who head to one of their hometowns for Christmas and eventually realize they’re meant to be. This has all the traditional Christmas decor and activities one could want, plus skiing and even a sexy Santa photo shoot.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 8.3
A hardworking executive, Sydney Price (Minka Kelly), allows herself one night of indulgence while in Paris on business. She has a meet cute with charming Parisian Henri (Tom Wozniczka) at a bookstore, and he offers to show her the sights. This leads to a romantic evening and a night together in bed. Both parties are surprised to arrive at the same business meeting the next day: Sydney is representing her company in a bid for a famed champagne brand, Château Cassell, and Henri happens to be the heir to said brand. As the different bidders try to convince Henri’s father to sell to them, Sydney has the chance to decide once and for all which she values more — business or love.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 8.5
A Christmas Prince is the original Netflix holiday movie — and the gold standard. It’s got rom-com tropes galore: Rose McIver plays a journalist (a primo rom-com occupation) who goes undercover (sure) to write an exposé about a playboy prince, with whom she naturally falls in love. While the underlying story doesn’t really have anything to do with Christmas, it all takes place at Christmastime in a chilly European country, which means there’s holiday cheer galore — and plenty of snow-capped mountains. Plus, it spawned two sequels.
Holiday Cheer Factor: 9
Additional reporting by Ananda Dillon
