It's the holiday season, and with Christmas just 10 days away, the Bitesize crew has put their brains together to compile Bitesize Breakdown's consensus Top Five Christmas Movies.
Each writer ranks his or her top 15 films in the category. Those lists are then weighted on a reverse point system. After all the points are tallied up, the entries with the most total points make up the Bitesize Top Five.
5. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
The life of George Bailey (James Stewart) is a holiday tradition in many a household for good reason: the love, the heartache, the joy, and the spirit. It’s A Wonderful Life is everything you relate to during the holiday season rolled into a warm hug. If Bailey yelling at every building in Bedford Falls doesn’t give you all the feels, then maybe we’ve found the real life Grinch. - Amarú
4. DIE HARD
Yes, Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Deal with it. I mean, at its core, it’s the story of a flawed-but-good man trying to fix his marriage during the holidays. Many Christmas movies have that same premise. The fact that it takes machine guns, C4 explosives, and German terrorists to make the reconciliation complete is irrelevant. And for people like me that don’t jive on all the sappiness and saccharine family feelings that tend to come with holiday movies, Die Hard is the perfect holiday palate cleanser. Yippee Ki-Yay, indeed. - Quentin
3. ELF
What can be said about Elf that hasn’t been said already? Jon Favreau’s 2003 Christmas comedy is everything charming, sentimental, strange, and wonderful about the holiday season wrapped up into a perfectly cast package that features one of the most beautiful musical scores a Christmas movie can ever hope to have and arguably Will Ferrell’s most iconic film performance. James Caan and Mary Steenburgen are terrifically matched, Peter Dinklage aces as Miles Finch, and who among us didn’t instantly fall in love with Zooey Deschanel’s Jovie? - Jacob
2. HOME ALONE
Home Alone is a classic that is a must watch every holiday season because it’s highly entertaining and delivers all the laughs. It just has everything going for it: a great ensemble cast, a script by John Hughes, direction by Chris Columbus, and a score from John Williams. The antics have been amusing us for decades too. We have all lived through Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) as he enjoyed every kid's dream of getting to do whatever he wanted in an empty home with no parents, all while taking on The Wet Bandits (Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern). - Paige
1. NATIONAL LAMPOON'S CHRISTMAS VACATION
I can’t possibly imagine a Christmas season without watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation at least once. There’s not a single scene in the movie that doesn’t make me laugh while watching Chevy Chase’s Clark Griswold try and fail to make the best Griswold Family Christmas ever. Plus, for a film littered with slapstick and crude humour, there is still an underlying feeling of heartfelt joy that, in a special Christmas way, never leaves while watching this film. - Adriano
HONORABLE MENTIONS
SCROOGED
THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL
A CHRISTMAS STORY
GREMLINS
BATMAN RETURNS
Photo Credits: Photo 1 - RKO Pictures; Photo 2, 4 - 20th Century Studios; Photo 3 - New Line Cinema; Photo 5 - Warner Bros.