My new favorite Christmas movie is Smosh playing deadly Jenga

Everyone has their go-to Christmas movies. You know yours: They're the films that carry memories of wintry nights and repeat family viewings, the ones you absolutely need to watch to get into the Christmas spirit.

For the longest time, my holiday movie staples included a rotation of Love Actually, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and the Rankin/Bass Christmas Specials. But recently, a new challenger has entered the festive arena, and while it's technically not a movie, it's still on its way to becoming part of my personal Christmas viewing rotation.

I'm talking about Smosh vs. Christmas, a two-part TTRPG actual play video from YouTube channel Smosh Games, itself part of the broader comedy collective Smosh.

In Smosh vs. Christmas, Smosh cast members Shayne Topp, Amanda Lehan-Canto, and Angela Giarratana play a Dread one-shot with game master George Primavera and guest player Nick Williams.

The mechanics of Dread are simple, making the videos accessible for viewers no matter their familiarity with TTRPGs. Every time a player wants to perform an action in-game, they have to pull a block from a Jenga tower. Pull the block and place it on top of the tower, and they succeed. Knock the tower over, and their character dies. Immediately.

You can always choose to fail voluntarily or heroically sacrifice yourself, but for the most part, there's no room for error. That means every second of every tower pull bristles with tension, making Dread an ideal TTRPG system for a horror one-shot.

And while there are certainly horror elements to Smosh vs. Christmas, make no mistake: This miniseries is a laugh riot. It's what you'd get if you crossed a Hallmark Christmas movie with Krampus.

The game picks up in the small Midwestern town of Kringleton, where every day is Christmas. As the townspeople prepare to celebrate Christmas proper with a hot cocoa drinking contest, four outsiders descend on the town, each a walking Hallmark movie archetype. There's Charlie Penn (Topp), a sensitive, struggling novelist with a tragic past; Guy Wood (Giarratana), a small-town carpenter with a big heart and even bigger muscles; and Scott Ornamente (Lehan-Canto), a Patrick Bateman-esque Manhattan big shot who hates his home town of Kringleton. Rounding out the pack is Pop (Williams), a jolly fellow who really seems like Santa Claus.

The fun of each character stems partly from the stereotypes they're sending up, and partly from the surprising depth each player brings to them. The bits these comedians concoct are uproarious, no doubt about it, but the true joy of Smosh vs. Christmas is getting invested in these characters — and watching each player get more and more invested in the story Primavera is building.

As Charlie, Guy, and Scott settle into Kringleton, they all cross paths with Kringleton's resident single woman, Carol (Primavera). So begins the Hallmark movie dating sim of my dreams, one where simply saying hi to your love interest could result in a Dread tower pull, and therefore, potential death. If you thought your love life was high-stakes, think again.

To say much more about what happens in Smosh vs. Christmas would ruin its best surprises. After all, Dread is a game fueled by suspense and spontaneity, and you deserve to experience the same levels of stress and amusement that I did while watching. But suffice it to say that Smosh vs. Christmas undergoes some of the wildest yet most satisfying twists I've seen in any Christmas media, a testament to the cast's improv and storytelling skills.

And Smosh vs. Christmas holds up even if you know what's coming. I first watched it when it came out in 2024, and I recently revisited it to kick off the holiday season in 2025. This time around, it brought with it not the shock and terror of watching a horror TTRPG play out, but rather the cozy nostalgia of recalling the first time I watched it, all swaddled up in blankets and nursing a cup of hot chocolate. (For further TTRPG scares, I'd recommend Smosh's 2025 Christmas Dread special, We're All Gonna Die on Christmas, another festive horror banger.)

On top of the nostalgia, though, I found myself already looking forward to next Christmas, when I could revisit both Smosh vs. Christmas and We're All Gonna Die on Christmas through new eyes. So if you're looking to switch up your own holiday programming and maybe start a new viewing tradition of your own, I highly recommend watching comedians pull blocks from a Jenga tower. Trust me, it's more Christmasy than it sounds.

Smosh vs. Christmas is on YouTube.