27 Funny Christmas Movies Worth Streaming Now

Christmas isn’t all that funny unless you have a slightly dark sensibility. The shopping and gifting and well wishes and sentimentality are great and all—but where are the punchlines?

The funniest Christmas movies have often mined the inner and outer psychological warfare that surrounds holiday rituals. Gathering with relatives who make you quietly seethe with hatred? Christmas Vacation gets you. Facing the unique existential dread that only caroling seems capable of bringing out? Check out the off-the-wall deadpan indie black comedy of White Reindeer. Or if you really just want to lay waste to the idea that this is the season of giving, cue up Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa.

Which is to say that the funniest Christmas movies may not quite embody the spirit we’re told to believe the holiday must espouse. But the best comedy has always brought an aggressive counterpoint to unthinking cheer in a way that allows us to laugh rather than run away in horror. (Though there’s always room for Charlie Brown to make us believe again, albeit with a sly chuckle.) Santa getting shot out of his carriage by Harold and Kumar? Funny.

Make yourself a boozy hot toddy and sink into these notably funny Christmas- and holiday-themed movies. Then go back to being nice to the uncles, aunts, and cousins who creep you out in a way you can’t quite define.