Every holiday season, I sit down and watch the classics. Films that fill me with joy and bring together friends and family. Films admire It’s a Wonderful Life, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, Scrooged, Home Alone, A Christmas Story, and Die Hard.
Make no mistake, the world is not at a loss for holiday classics, nor is it lacking in lists that include all the same movies. However, every single year brings us more and more holiday movies, many of which you never even hear about or recall. That’s the point of this list. We’ve come up with some holiday movies released in the past few years that are absolutely worth your time, are not all super obvious, and offer something other than plain old holiday nostalgia. Some of it’s violence, some of it’s action, and some of it is seeing Kurt Russell as Santa Claus or Deadpool’s Ryan Reynolds singing about Christmas.
A few are deeper cuts, a few are not, but all offer an edgier, or at least alternative, spin on the typical holiday fare.
