I love Christmas, because the whole season is filled with deliberate once-a-year activities…the downtown Christmas parade…taking the kids to see Santa…the annual party at your crazy neighbors…the 30 day carb and sugar fest.

Christmas movies are no exception.  Truly classic holiday films can be viewed once and only once every 365 days - lest they loose their meaning and become oddly abstract outside the holiday season; which just makes the good ones that much more special.

So while the count-down to C-Day is on, here a some classic Christmas films to help set the holiday mood.

Hands down, the number one all time greatest Christmas movie is It’s A Wonderful Life starring the late great Jimmy Stewart. This is the one holiday flick I think you can watch over and over.  In fact, it makes a perfect background during a party or, as The Delicious says “it HAS to be playing in the background when i’m baking holiday cookies, and on Christmas Eve, we have to watch it together as a family.”

Regardless, who can resist Jimmy Stewart’s eternal optimism and hopeless romantic antics - tying a lasso around the moon?? Does it get any cuter? Plus Zuzu and her petals, the funny bank manager and the lovely Donna Reed all add to pure Christmas magic.

Keeping it retro, but a little more sassy is my second favorite Christmas movie, A Christmas Story. Very few films capture childhood as perfectly as A Christmas Story…especially for wide-eyed boys.  There are too many hilarious scenes in this movie to mention, and we’ve all experienced the equivalent in our own lives (for me, the soap-in-the-mouth-for-swearing scene is particularly funny).  For parents who just want the best for their kids during the most stressful time of year to the time we all hoped and prayed for that one special “I-have-to-have-it-or-die” present, A Christmas Story will make all ages laugh.  Or, as ThisNexter LeslieRoses puts it, “Nothing beats watching this movie with my sister & brother on Christmas. We’re old now, but still laugh like idiots until someone wets their pants.”

Moving into more contemporary Christmas movies, I have to say that National Lampoons Christmas Vacation is a guilty, and gut-busting pleasure.  The first time I saw this movie I laughed till I cried. For anyone tight on cash, cursed with psychotic relatives, desperate for a perfect holiday, and fed up with their boss, Christmas Vacation is the cheapest therapy you’ll get all season.

And in the kid-friendly (as if It’s A Wonderful Life isn’t) and animated dept, my two Christmas faves are How The Grinch Stole Christmas and box office flop The Polar Express.

OK, OK, so I’m a sucker for great kid fantasies…. and Polar Express is an often overlooked one that just fits that Christmas kid in all of us. I saw it in the IMAX/3D (yup, glasses and all) version. The 4 year old I was with would oooh and ahhh and reach for different objects apparently floating by. In any event, I bit big time at the box office and now this is one of my favs. Take me up on it, your inner kid will be as happy as if you’d had a popcicle.

For more classic Hoilday movies, visit my Gift Guide: Classic Christmas Movies list at ThisNext.