Delight in these 12 trash holiday movies on Netflix
The winter holidays are a great time to catch up on your prestige TV and your Oscar-bait movies, but let's get our priorities straight: The primary entertainment function of December is trashy Christmas movies.
In honor of Netflix's guilty pleasure A Christmas Prince (and upcoming Christmas Inheritance, which we fully expect to meet the same standard), let us revel in the yuletide joy of of these mindless movies.
Usually the bread and butter of Hallmark, Netflix is trying to get into the mix with the below originals as well as some from other networks that Netflix is currently streaming.
Pass the cocoa.
A Christmas Prince
An editor who has somehow never written an article (fun fact: that's not how that works at all) gets sent to the fictional country of Aldovia (where everyone is English) to dig up some dirt on its prince. Cue every royal-romance trope you can possibly think of and a few shameless shot-for-shot ripoffs of The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement and Beauty and the Beast.
El Camino Christmas
Eric (Luke Grimes) looks for his estranged father before Christmas and ends up stuck with a veritable squad of randos in outrageous movie, which also stars Tim Allen, Vincent D'Onofrio, Dax Shephard, and – inexplicably – Jessica Alba.
Christmas Inheritance
A young woman has to visit her unknown hometown before receiving her inheritance, but she ends up snowed in and probably finding love! Jake Lacy is in this movie. What's going on, Jake Lacy?
12 Dates of Christmas
It's Groundhog Day for Christmas! It's 50 First Dates with snow! Kate (Amy Smart) keeps reliving a Christmas Eve date, and the only way out of the loop is to somehow change the day's events.
A Christmas Star
A girl named Noelle thinks she's Christmas incarnate while trying to save her town from an encroaching development. Featuring Pierce Brosnan, Liam Neeson, and Kylie Minogue, with Robert James-Collier (Downton Abbey's Thomas) as the nefarious suit threatening the village.
A Christmas Kiss
An interior designer has a romantic run-in with a taken man, only to find out that he's dating her boss, and also he's rich! Much like the wedding planner before her, she spends too much time with him while doing her job, and they fall in love.
Christmas in the City
Wendy runs a candy store in a perpetually Christmassy town, but she only has a few weeks to keep the store going or she and her daughter will be out for good. She takes a temporary job at a department store in the city, where her boss is Ashanti and there are shirtless male models working as elves. Also Santa Claus is real in this movie. Watch it now.
The Christmas Candle
A 19th-century village gets a visit from a Christmas angel, but the local reverend wants the villagers to focus on God instead. He tries to distract the villagers from their fixation on the candle while various characters find their faith in it reinforced. Susan Boyle is in this movie and sings an original song! Good for her!
Christmas Crush
Georgia can't stop thinking about her high school crush even 10 years later, and focuses on winning him back at their reunion with a Rebecca Bunch-esque fervor. Will she find a happily ever after with her teen love, or was the real love under her nose all along in the form of a platonic male friend??
The Christmas Project
Four brothers use the holidays to get back at their school bullies. Would be better if it were Stranger Things.
The Heart of Christmas
Candace Cameron Bure stars as Megan, a working mother trying to have it all (how does she do it!). When she learns that a local family's young child has terminal leukemia, Megan looks at her own life, husband, and children in a new light.
All American Christmas Carol
Charles Dickens meets Mamma Mia in this story of a single mother who has threee kids from three fathers, featuring Taryn Manning, Wendi McLendon Covey, and Meat Loaf. Cindy (Manning) finds herself visited by three Christmas ghosts and learns all the lessons, probably.
Topics Netflix
Proma Khosla is a Senior Entertainment Reporter writing about all things TV, from ranking Bridgerton crushes to composer interviews and leading Mashable's stateside coverage of Bollywood and South Asian representation. You might also catch her hosting video explainers or on Mashable's TikTok and Reels, or tweeting silly thoughts from @promawhatup.
