25 God-Awful Christmas Movies To Watch This December

Getting ready for Christmas? Let's ruin that for you.

Bored of arguments about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not? Tired of the problematic undertones of Love Actually? Exhausted with whatever the fuck is going on the Polar Express? You’ve seen the classics over and over and over again, welcome to the world of terrible Christmas films.

Before you go into the world of terrible Christmas movies, there are some things you should know. These movies fall into two categories. Hallmark and Hallmark adjacent. Hallmark set the precedent for this nonsense, and they do it very well (‘well’ being generous there but you get the idea.) In recent years Netflix and Prime have tried to hustle in on this market, and it rarely goes well. Netflix have even created a Christmas cinematic universe which I find infuriating to a ridiculous degree but we digress. There are several rules you need to know before you start on your terrible Christmas movie marathon. First, the main character is a woman. She is single, she works in the big city, and she either returns to her family home, or goes abroad. Why is she single? Because she works in the big city and has a career and simply doesn’t have time shut up. She is allowed a friend who is a person of colour but that friend is NOT the main character. Main characters are white in this universe. If only there was someone to remind her what life is really about hey. That’s where our man comes in. He is also single, but he is a man so that’s okay. If he has a child then his wife has died. That is a rule. Over 90 minutes (never longer) they start off not liking each other, (Her big city ways, his country bumpkin nonsense lifestyle) but then either a show, parade, festival or event will bring them together to save the town, inn, hotel, b and b, and as they go on this journey they are allowed one dry kiss. It’s the true meaning of the season. So strap in, because things are about to get beautifully awful.

New this year:

No I haven’t watched Hot Frosty yet. I am dying to watch Hot Frosty.

A Very British Christmas.

Oscar Winner and Hollyoaks Alumni Rachel Shenton is American for some reason, and ends up stranded in Knaresborough (somehow? She gets a steam train there? What is happening?) and ends up at an Airbnb with a man who could be old enough to be her father and a precocious child. BUT. The farm? Airbnb? It’s never mentioned… is in financial trouble! MILD PERIL AHOY.

The Merry Gentlemen

Chad Michael Murray is in this. He will appear in this list several times. It’s like someone watched Magic Mike, got high, watched a bunch of hallmark Christmas movies and thought THIS COULD BE SOMETHING and made a film. Wildly confusing. This also ties into the Netflix Cinematic Christmas Universe which I hate.

Meet Me Next Christmas

Ever heard of the band Pentatonix? No me either, but this film is basically an advert for that band for some reason. A woman meets a stranger at an airport lounge at Christmas, and says a year later they should meet at a Pentatonix concert. But to find him she enlists a handsome young OTHER man. WHAT WILL SHE DO. Sponsored by Pentatonix.

More absolute nonsense:

I believe in Santa

So this absolute creepo meets a child at a fair and then starts dating the childs mother? Serial killer behaviour. Then the mum discovers the creepo believes in Santa, and that’s the movie. He is 100% a serial killer and this film takes place inside of his victims mind as the last blood leaves their body.

Holiday in Handcuffs

Sabrina The Teenage Witch Kidnaps Slater from Saved By The Bell and what in the Stockholm syndrome chaos is this movie. It starts with a felony, and throughout the victim is coerced to spend Christmas with a mad woman and then falls in love with her? Whoever wrote the script for this movie has definitely stalked people.

Christmas At Dollywood

Yep. It’s a Hallmark (adjacent not officially Hallmark) Christmas movie set at Dollywood where the word Dollywood is spoken every 30 seconds like its bloody mary. Dolly doesn’t appear until the end. There is not enough Dolly in this film. Also a single mother takes a new job near her home town and falls in love with a local OH WHAT A SHOCK.

Christmas Incorporated

A single woman working in the big city is trying to get a new job, and LIES (bad) about who she is, but gets the big job! She becomes a personal assistant to a young CEO who runs a toy company that MAY be shutting down it’s factory in a small town JUST before Christmas. Essentially she is committing identity fraud throughout but it’s okay because it’s Christmas.

Christmas At The Drive In

This movie is fucking absurd. A woman returns to her hometown to discover a big bad corporation is selling the local drive in movie theatre to create affordable housing (a good thing as the drive in wasn’t being used?!) and makes it her mission to bring the drive in back to life in the middle of winter and also there’s a character who is definitely supposed to be a real Santa.

Angel Falls Christmas

Chad Michael Murray is an angel for some reason. A single big city woman returns to her hometown in need of help. But Chad Michael’s his Murray all over the place and falls for her, but this is against Angel rules (there is so much lore that is just never explained here it’s baffling), so helps her get back with her awful ex-boyfriend. Terrible.

B&B Merry

Incredible title. A travel blogger is gifted a free visit to a B&B and falls in love with the handsome young man that works there (it is never specified what he does apart from hanging around the place). There is mild peril where she has double booked herself to do another job but frankly this is mentioned in the first half hour and then is just… fine?!

A Christmas Cookie Catastrophe

A single woman who lives in the city (told you it was a theme) takes over a Cookie business (which seems to only have one shop but a board of 12 people?) and someone steals Grandma’s secret cookie recipe. To save her business, she teams up with a guy who hates city women (this is a common theme as well) to re-create the recipe. Also there is a character who is probably Santa.

Christmas At The Plaza

A historian is asked to do an exhibit at The Plaza hotel in new York and a ‘handsome’ decorator has to help her. That’s it. That’s the film. There is nothing else going on here. I am so confused how is this 90 minutes long.

Christmas On The Square

An insane musical where Dolly Parton is an Angel and Christine Baranski is trying to shut down the town for… something. Widly confusing. Watch it immediately.

A Christmas Melody

A Mariah Carrey directed Christmas movie. Yep. A single woman moves back to her hometown and look that’s not important. Mariah Carrey stars as the woman that used to bully the lead, (Lacey Chabert) but is 100% never on the same set as the rest of the cast. She is always filmed away and by herself. It’s incredible.

Matchmaker Santa

Lacey Chabert again, but this time she is a baker who goes on holiday with her handsome boyfriend BUT falls for his friend instead. Also Santa is there and kind of introduces the two and then fucks off? Confusing.

One Royal Holiday

Another trope that I forgot to mention in Hallmark and Hallmark adjacent movies is a handsome young prince from a country in Europe that definitely isn’t Britain but they all have British accents and it’s filmed in Britain but it’s called something absurd like Bumgravia. Anyway. A prince goes to the USA for reasons, gets stranded in a small town and meets a single woman. If she had approached a prince out of the blue a security guard would have shot her.

The Christmas Train

This movie has actual famous people in it? Like Joan Cusack and Danny Glover?! And it makes no sense? Some people get onto a train, then two people who used to go out with each other recognise each other. That’s the movie. They mention Christmas once.

Switched For Christmas

Two estranged identical twins meet each other and are jealous of each other’s lifestyles so decide to swap for Christmas. The absurd aspect of this film is one of the twins has kids and the other is like, yeah I want to deal with that for weeks up until Christmas. Feels like the other twin gets the better deal here. Bilge.

Christmas In Vienna

Kepner from Greys Anatomy (I can’t be bothered to look up their real name sorry) is a musician in Vienna for a concert but she’s not really feeling it anymore. Then she meets the most terrifying looking man I have ever seen on screen and this makes her want to play music again? She needs better standards.

My Dad’s Christmas Date

Honestly one of the most confusing Christmas movies ever made. Filmed and shot in York, Jeremy Piven drives around York in the most confusing way possible, it would take him hours to get anyway. The movie starts as a comedy, but ends up as a tragic story about his wife’s death?! And there are numerous dog death jokes?! Baffling.

The Christmas House

Aaron Samuels from Mean Girls and his family have a tradition of making their house a horrendous spectacle to all things wrong with the season, and it’s important that they do it one more time (there is a sequel to this which ruins it) before their parents sell the house. That’s it. This is actually enjoyable shut up I think I am losing my mind.

A Timeless Christmas

I know I’ve said this, but this movie absurd. A woman goes to an old house and takes a tour and the ghost of the man who lived there comes back to life for some reason and together they find the meaning of Christmas? The problem here being it’s definitely a plantation house and the timing would mean this man definitely owned slaves.

A Christmas Inheritance

Plop from The US Office works as a Inn… mechanic? It’s so difficult to know what he does. A single woman from the big city (WE ARE SO BACK) has to deliver a letter to her dad’s old business partner or she will lose the family business or something. I don’t know I lost the plot when Plop shows his art to this single city woman and it’s the most unhinged moment of cinema in years.

Next Stop Christmas

Christopher Lloyd is in this movie. YOU HEARD ME. A busy single city woman wonders what life would be like if she married her past boyfriend, so a magical Christmas Train arrives (not THE Christmas Train that’s a different movie) and she ends up in the past and tries to fall for her boyfriend but is it her FRIEND she was interested in the whole time?! WAS IT?! (It was).

A Royal Queens Christmas

A Prince from an unspecified European Country that speaks with British accents ends up in Queens for Christmas and is taken in by a single city woman and her family. The family are played in an offensively stereotypical Italian American way and at one point they all shout CANOLLI. Incredible.

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Please recommend me more absolute garbage to watch I honestly cannot get enough of this nonsense.

If you got to this point of the post thank you for reading I am so very very sorry.