Funniest Christmas Movies : Every Christmas, we gather around that most precious altar in America—the TV set—and fill our hearts with joy through these excellent holiday movies. Here are the eleven funniest Christmas movies of all time
Funniest Christmas Movies
Credit: Warner Brothers
| 11 | National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation |
If you remember when the National Lampoon name used to mean something, you must be as old as we are. The humor magazine turned film franchise was responsible for one of the most balls-out funniest Christmas movies ever, starring Chevy Chase as the perennially perplexed paterfamilias Clark Griswold. When the entre Griswold clan gathers for the holidays, Clark's dream of having a good old-fashioned Christmas goes up in smoke—literally. Rude, crude, and downright hilarious, this is a must-see every year.
Credit: New Line Cinema
| 10 | Elf |
Santa Claus: what is that dude really up to? In the much-loved holiday flick Elf, he's accidentally kidnapping babies and forcing them to be raised by elves at the North Pole. When baby Buddy grows up to be Will Ferrell, he realizes that he just doesn't fit in with the toymaking set and lights out for New York City to find his real father. Naturally, things don't go so smoothly, but this is one of the funniest Christmas movies ever shot. Ferrell dives into the role of Buddy with both feet, eating terrifying amounts of sugar and keeping a cheerful face no matter what indignities the world dumps on him.
Credit: Warner Brothers
| 9 | A Christmas Story |
Widely recognized as one of the best holiday movies ever made, 1983's A Christmas Story perfectly encapsulates the mixture of elation and humilation that the season brings us. Young Ralphie just wants a Red Ryder BB gun under the tree, but pretty much every adult he asks tells him that he'll shoot his eye out. On the way to Christmas, we get some endlessly quotable scenes, including the bit where his dad (played amazingly by Darren McGavin) loses his mind at the neighbor's dogs. There's a reason some TV channels show this for 24 hours straight every Christmas.
Credit: Universal Pictures
| 8 | Comfort And Joy |
This underrated UK flick, directed by Bill Forsyth, deserves a spot on your holiday movie rotation. When DJ Allan "Dicky" Bird gets unexpectedly dumped by his girlfriend, his life starts to spin wildly out of control. After following an ice cream truck on a whim, he becomes caught up in a vicious turf war between two rival ice cream gangs. In the spirit of Christmas, he tries to mediate the dispute, but his increasingly weird behavior gets his bosses nervous. This is a flick that really captures the Christmas spirit of peace on earth and good will to men, plus it's damn hilarious to boot.
Credit: Touchstone Pictures
| 7 | The Ref |
Let's be honest with each other: sometimes Christmas isn't that much fun. Take The Ref—the flick opens with main characters Lloyd and Caroline in marriage counseling on Christmas Eve. Who goes to marriage counseling on Christmas Eve? A couple with a problem, that's who. Things just get worse for them when they return home only to be taken hostage by cat burglar Gus, played by Denis Leary. Gus obviously has no patience for the bickering duo, but as the movie progresses we learn that family is the most important thing. Oh, and helping criminals escape the police, too.
Lauren Graham in Bad Santa
| 6 | Bad Santa |
I think we all have horrifying repressed memories of drunken department store Santa impersonators holding us on their trembling laps while boozily asking us what we want in our stocking. 2003's Bad Santa takes that concept to the limit, with Billy Bob Thornton starring as a con man who poses as St. Nick to rob malls with his dwarf sidekick. Unfortunately, his alcohol intake - as well as a friendship with a fat, unlovable kid—threatens to queer this year's deal. It all works out in the end, of course—if you count Santa being shot eight times in front of screaming kids "working out."
Credit: 20th Century Fox
| 5 | Deck The Halls |
The intense competition that surrounds Christmas decorations is such a suburban trope. But when the ruler of the neighborhood meets some new competition, the electric bill starts to skyrocket. This amusing comedy ups the ante in a series of pretty hilarious scenes, as the two men battle to have the most ostentatious display on the block. When your goal is to have Christmas lights that can be seen from space, you know you have a problem. Of course, since this is a Christmas movie, we do get a happy ending when all is said and done.
Credit: Warner Brothers
| 4 | The Man Who Came To Dinner |
One of the most timeless holiday movie tropes is the unwanted guest. Let's venture back to 1942 for a deep cut that shows just how that concept got started. In The Man Who Came To Dinner, smartass critic Sheridan Whiteside gets stranded in rural Ohio for the holidays, and his presence there throws the whole town into chaos. This is a whip-smart, hilarious movie with tons of great dialogue that is still funny over half a century later, and it shows that Christmas can make even the worst situation tolerable.
Credit: Scrooged
| 3 | Scrooged |
Some people just don't care for the holiday season. Take Frank Cross, the TV executive played by Bill Murray in Scrooged. Cross loves to fire people on Christmas and generally act like a scumbag, but when he's visited by three ghosts that aim to teach him what the holidays are all about, things get very wild for ol' Frank. In this timeless update of the Charles Dickens classic, Bill Murray shines as the most anti-Christmas figure since the Grinch. This flick is jammed to the gills with unforgettable scenes.
Trading Places (1983)
| 2 | Trading Places |
Christmas is the season when we open our hearts to our fellow man, and what better way to do so than to see how the other half lives? In classic comedy Trading Places, Dan Aykroyd plays a commodity broker who gets switcheroo'd with Eddie Murphy's street hustler to settle a bet. Needless to say, both men have problems adjusting to their new lives, but they come together in the end to stop an insider trading scheme. This is a timelessly hilarious Christmas movie that deserves to be in the canon.
Santa's Slay
| 1 | Santa's Slay |
A number of horror movies have tried to use Christmas as their setting, but none did it quite as ludicrously as Santa's Slay. Starring professional wrestler Bill Goldberg as Santa—Satan's only son, who lost a bet with an angel and was forced to spend a thousand years on Earth making children happy. But when that thousand years is up, Claus needs to make up for lost time by killing everybody who's been naughty this year. Needless to say, that's a lot of people. This is an absurdist slice of horror cheese that should be on everybody's holiday rotation; it might not be the most cheerful Christmas movie, but it's the funniest Christmas movie.
