What Is The Best Christmas Movie Of All Time?

Some people worship classic Christmas films like It’s a Wonderful Life while others can’t imagine a holiday that doesn’t involve watching Love Actually. Then there are those who insist Die Hard is the best Christmas movie.

But what movie is actually considered the best Christmas movie of all time? It’s a contentious question that can be debated until the end of time -- or at least until the end of supper. However thanks to a new poll from the Hollywood Reporter we may lay all those arguments to rest.  America’s favorite Christmas movie is … drum roll please… Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

The people have spoken, and America has declared the animated classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer the best Christmas movie of all time. That’s despite recent criticism that the movie promotes bullying (We aren't sure how that works.)

Of just over 2,000 adults surveyed, 83% had a favorable impression of the 1964 stop-motion film with Burl Ives, with more than half saying they had very positive things to say about the film. Sixty-eight percent associate the Rudolph with the holiday spirit, which has been shown on TV pretty much every year for more than half a century. Even with the decline of cable television, this year, more than 8 million people tuned in to watch Rudolph, Hermey the elf and Yukon Cornelius save Christmas when it was broadcast on CBS on November 27.

How other classic Christmas films rank:
Rudolph took the top spot in the ranking of most-loved Christmas movies, but not by a wide margin. Three other films were rated as “favorable” by at least 80% of survey respondents. (The survey asked people about 37 films in total.)
After Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the other top nine Christmas movies were:

• A Charlie Brown Christmas: 81%
• Frosty the Snowman: 80%
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966 animated version): 80%
• Home Alone: 78%
• A Christmas Story: 73%
• A Christmas Carol: 72%
• The Polar Express: 70%
• It’s a Wonderful Life: 69%
• Miracle on 34th Street: 68%

Not all holiday movies are well loved. While people generally had positive feelings about feel-good Christmas classics, less-traditional fare or movies with edgier humor weren’t as popular.

The darkly comic Bad Santa with Billy Bob Thorton was the movie people were most likely to say they didn’t like. Twenty-six percent of people gave it an unfavorable rating. Seventeen percent of people said they didn’t like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation or Elf.

Movies that aren’t obviously Christmas films also ranked lower that favorites like Rudolph and Charlie Brown. Eighteen percent said they didn’t enjoy The Nightmare Before Christmas which is also considered a Halloween movie. Nineteen percent said they didn’t like Gremlins, and 17% weren’t fans of Die Hard. I know... gasp! It's hard to believe. 
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Of course, the survey didn’t ask about every Christmas movie ever, so people didn’t get a chance to share their feelings about some truly terrible holiday films, like the campy 1964 cult classic Santa Claus Conquers the Martians or the just plain bad Saving Christmas, the 2014 Kirk Cameron vehicle that’s one of just a few dozen movies to earn a horrible 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes.