When it comes to Christmas, the TV guide is packed full of seasonal classics, Home Alone, Miracle on 34th Street and let’s not forget the annual ‘is it even a Christmas film?’ debate – Die Hard.
But with so many Christmas films to watch, there’s always going to be debate over which ones are the best – until now, that is!
Nido Student looked at IMDB rankings, Rotten Tomatoes scores, and Google percentages of users who liked the various Christmas films then averaged the scores to create an index of the all-time top Christmas movies.
What we have found surprising is the festive film at the top of the charts, which only premiered on Netflix last year, is Bafta-winning and Oscar-nominated film Klaus with a score of 92/100. (Nope noone at The Swindonian have heard of it either?)
An alternative origin story of Santa Claus that tells the tale of Jesper Johansson, the lazy son of the Royal Postmaster General who is sent to revitalise the delivery service in the remote town of Smeerensburg.
There he encounters reclusive woodsman Klaus, who he discovers is a skilled toymaker.
Other films in the top ten include It’s A Wonderful Life, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Die Hard, Scrooge and the original 1947 version of Miracle On 34th Street.
Home Alone, Nativity, Love Actually and Elf are not even in the top ten!
At the other end of the table, Saving Christmas was ranked as the worst reviewed festive film, with a score of just 22/100.
Explaining how the scores were worked out a Nido spokesperson said: “We compared the aggregated average score of all movies against the year of release to see whether ratings were going up or down.
“The results showed movies consistently ranking highly from the 1930s to now, although scores have seen a general decline from the 1930s to 2020.
“No Christmas movies before 1950 scored below 65, making the 1930s – 1950s the time when the most consistently high-ranking Christmas movies were released.
“Most movies released between 1930 and 1960 scored within 75 to 100, whereas between 1980 to 2020 most movies ranked within the 50 to 75 range.”
The full rankings for all 167 films can be found on the Nido Student website.
