For starters, I pretty much hate any new Christmas movie made in the last couple of decades. I tried to watch “The Christmas Bunny” a couple years ago and the entire family of the little girl were all so awful, shortsighted, insensitive and sometimes downright mean, that I wished the old lady played by Flo Henderson had just adopted the kid.
I do like the old TCM-era ones, but I find it a little hard to watch them anymore because they tend to make me wistful and sad. I enjoy the happy ending of “It’s a Wonderful Life”, but watching George Bailey suffer through multiple disappointments in life to get to that point is not fun. The kids’ movies are even worse. I also always loved Rudolph, but the “Isle of Misfit Toys” scenes made me sad as a kid and makes me just burst into tears as an old person. “The Little Drummer Boy” is another one that is just a plain old cry-fest from the opening scene straight on through to the Baby Jesus curing the little lamb.
I tend to enjoy digging up some of the more obscure old Christmas movies out there, like “Holiday Affair” with Janet Leigh and Robert Mitchum, and “The Crowded Day” that has John Gregson and lots of British actors I mostly don’t know except for a very young Prunella Scales, later of Fawlty Towers fame. This year I might try watching “White Christmas” and “Holiday Inn” because I always get those two mixed up. My husband liked “White Christmas” the film.