The 25 Days of Christmas Movie Countdown

Unsung Christmas classic, "The Long Kiss Goodnight"

This is a challenge I don't even think I can live up to...and I'm pretty obsessive about movies. But should you be brave enough to try to find the time to watch roughly fifty hours of movies in the already-packed month of December, here's your guide to a holiday movie a day until Christmas.

Easing Into the Christmas Movies - You've got to pace yourself. I like to start with movies that only include Christmas as one element within a larger story. It's best to fight cinematic holiday fatigue by starting with these four...

Dec. 1^st – Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Dec. 2^nd – Funny Farm

Dec. 3^rd – Sleepless in Seattle

Dec. 4^th – Serendipity

Action and Comedy – Think of action and comedy movies that involve Christmas as cinematic appetizers. Because the truth is, once you start watching the classics, there's sort of no going back tonally-speaking. So keep the mood light to start.

Dec. 5^th – The Long Kiss Goodnight

Dec. 6^th – Die Hard

Dec. 7^th - Scrooged

Dec. 8^th – Mixed Nuts

Dec. 9^th – Love Actually

Dec. 10^th – The Santa Clause

Dec. 11^th – A Christmas Story

Warming Up to the Classics – After the smorgasbord of sarcasm, action violence and wacky early nineties comedy, you might even be feeling a little bit guilty. Now is a good time to start diving into the heavier material.

Dec. 12^th – Miracle on 34^th Street

Dec. 13^th – The Greatest Story Ever Told

The Burton Block – Beautiful, haunting, creative and original. These stylized holiday classics...yeah, I called them classics, can give you a break from the holiday cliches confronting you all day, every day at this point.

Dec. 14^th – Edward Scissorhands

Dec. 15^th – Nightmare Before Christmas

Cry It Out – Relieve some of your holiday stress with a good-old-fashioned Beaches-style cry-fest. Go into the final push toward Christmas feeling grateful for your family. Go on. Let it out. You'll cry now and then during our next block of movies for sure. But those will be happy tears. These are palate-cleansing tears.

Dec. 16^th – The Family Stone

Classics and Neo-Classics – These are the movies you will watch. No matter what. They've become regulars for a reason.

Dec. 17^th – Holiday Inn

Dec. 18^th – A Christmas Carol – (Albert Finney's version)

Dec. 19^th – Muppet's Christmas Carol

Dec. 20^th - ELF

Dec. 21^st - How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer - I know, they're not technically movies, but combined, they make a great movie night.

Dec. 22^nd – White Christmas

Dec. 23^rd – Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

Dec. 24^th – National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

Dec. 25^th – It's A Wonderful Life

Bonus Movie - If you pride yourself on your endurance, I challenge you to watch the Rifftrax version of "The Star Wars Holiday Special". You NEVER knew a movie could be so absurd, but you'll also never laugh as hard as you will watching it with the Rifftrax crew.

There are many movies that didn't make this list...what are the movies you won't miss this month?