The 15 most-watched holiday movies this season. Did your favorite make the cut?

Entertainment Erin Jensen 19/12/2023

What holiday movies are sleighing the ratings? It’s a mixed Santa’s sack of the Ghost of Christmas Past and the Ghost of Christmas Present, according to data shared exclusively with USA TODAY.

Samba TV, which analyzes viewership habits of households collected through smart TVs, assembled a list of the most-watched movies on TV and streaming services in the U.S. between Nov. 10 and Dec. 10. (For the study, a view means the household watched at least five minutes of a feature.)

Smiling along to “Elf” proved audiences’ favorite. So far, 9 million households have watched the 2003 feature starring Will Ferrell as whimsical Buddy the tall elf, who left the North Pole in search of his biological father. Nearly 8 million households have found 1989's “National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation” as enjoyable as a one-year membership to a jelly-of-the-month club. Who doesn’t feel for Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) during his obsessive quest to provide a perfect Christmas for his extended family? And this stat might make you do Macaulay Culkin’s famed “Home Alone” face: the 33-year-old flick, in which a son forgotten by his vacationing family fights off burglars, raked in 7.1 million views.

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By comparison, only three original holiday movies released on streaming platforms this year managed to snare more than 1 million households. Netflix’s “Best. Christmas. Ever!” starring Jason Biggs, Heather Graham and Brandy Norwood, attracted 2.3 million households. “The Family Switch,” Netflix's holiday-themed spin on “Freaky Friday” with Jennifer Garner and Ed Helms, garnered 1.9 million, which ties it with Amazon Prime Video’s “Candy Cane Lane,” starring Eddie Murphy.

Murphy told USA TODAY that he longed to do his first Christmas movie, and decided on “Candy Cane Lane” — a sort of “Jumanji” meets “The Santa Clause” — after contemplating remaking a classic. “’It's a Wonderful Life,’ 'Miracle on 34th Street,' we were looking through all of them," Murphy said. "But then this script came along, and it was like, ‘Hey, this has all the elements, and it's unique. So we can make our own little modern-day classic instead of remaking an old one.’”

The 15 most-watched movies between Nov. 10 and Dec. 10:

You'll notice that the largely debated "Die Hard" starring Bruce Willis makes the list. As Ashwin Navin, Samba TV's CEO, sees it: "There's no debate: 'Die Hard' is in fact a Christmas movie, and one of the greatest of all time at that," he said in a statement.

  1. "Elf" (2003, streaming on Max), 9 million household views
  2. "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation" (1989, Max), 7.9
  3. "Home Alone" (1990, Disney+), 7.1
  4. "The Santa Clause" (1994, Disney+), 4.3
  5. "Four Christmases" (2008, Max), 3.5
  6. "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" (2000, on Peacock Dec. 20‒31), 2.5
  7. "Best. Christmas. Ever!" (2023, Netflix Original), 2.3
  8. "The Holiday" (2006, for rent on Amazon Prime, YouTube, Google Play, Apple TV), 2.3
  9. "Family Switch" (2023, Netflix Original), 1.9
  10. "A Christmas Story" (1983, Max), 1.9
  11. "Candy Cane Lane" (2023, Amazon Original), 1.9
  12. "It's a Wonderful Life" (1947, Amazon Prime), 1.7
  13. "Die Hard" (1988, Disney+), 1.4
  14. "Love Actually" (2003, Netflix), 1.4
  15. "The Polar Express" (2004, Max), 1.1

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