let your heart be light

So in January I decided I wanted to make a Christmas movie advent calendar just of movies that I hadn’t seen before, and I did do this to the extent that I made a list of 24 movies, and then… that’s it. And of course I sort of forgot about it, but managed to remember by late November, so we did it! We watched all 24 movies!

And I probably should have anticipated this given that I picked the movies, but despite all the movies involving Christmas to some extent (my rule was pretty much, does the movie take place over Christmas, if yes then it counts – sure yeah Die Hard would be a Christmas movie but I’ve seen it so), this gave us a pretty broad swath of genres, a lot of festive family-friendly fare but also like, noir! War drama! Black comedy! French New Wave! It did make me want to try to come up with more movie marathons with some theme that can work through many different kinds of movies.

I’ve logged these on letterboxd, but in any case, here are briefly 24 Christmas movies I hadn’t seen before:


( White Reindeer (2013) )

( Gremlins (1984) )

( Single All the Way (2021) )

( The Lion in Winter (1968) )

( Miracle on 34th Street (1947) )

( The Apartment (1960) )

( Tangerine (2015) )

( Ma nuit chez Maud | My Night at Maud’s (1969) )

( Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey (2020) )

( Let It Snow (2019) )

( Lady in the Lake (1946) )

( 醜聞 | Scandal (1950) )

( Joyeux Noel (2005) )

( Klaus (2019) )

( 東京ゴッドファーザーズ | Tokyo Godfathers (2003) )

( 8-Bit Christmas (2021) )

( Batman Returns (1992) )

( Little Women (1994) )

( Feast of the Seven Fishes (2019) )

( The Shop Around the Corner (1940) )

( Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) )

( The Thin Man (1934) )

( Happy Christmas (2014) )

( Meet Me in St. Louise (1944) )