Best Christmas Cinema Classics

A Look at Some of the Best Big-Screen Holiday Feature Films of All Time

They just don’t make ’em like they used to.

Christmas movies, that is.

Feature films for theatres.

Motion pictures for the big screen.

Television does a pretty good job with holiday editions of what used to be called “movies of the week.”

But Christmas movies for actual leave-the-house, movie-theatre-going lovers?

Not seein’ ’em, certainly nothing compared to classics such as the 1934 Laurel and Hardy edition of Babes in Toyland, which many consider a New York City classic.

Then there’s the 1938 edition of the Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol, starring Reginald Owen as Scrooge. Hollywood royalty, in the guise of the Lockhart family, those being father Gene, mother Kathleen, and daughter June (much later of TV’s Lost in Space and Petticoat Junction).

The black-and-white Holiday Inn, starring Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby in 1942, was the precursor to the stunning and colorful semi-remake, White Christmas (with Danny Kaye stepping in for Astaire, who was unavailable, due to caring for his ailing wife in real life).