Science has determined the best* Christmas film
If you log in to twitter at this time of year, there’s usually discussion about whether it’s Love Actually or Die Hard that’s the best Christmas film. But I am here to tell you that, in terms of what the Great British public have actually watched and enjoyed, Home Alone is at the front of the pack. Public First asked a nationally representative sample of 1410 people what they thought of a variety of Christmas films, and a whopping 72% of respondents told us that they had both seen and enjoyed Home Alone, a full 15 percentage points more than the next most popular film, which was The Snowman.
To be fair to Love Actually, it does outperform other romcoms, including The Holiday. 49% of respondents have seen and enjoyed Love Actually, compared to only 34% who have seen and enjoyed The Holiday. And most shockingly of all to me, an enthusiastic The Holiday watcher, 43% of people actively do not plan to see The Holiday compared to only 27% who don’t plan to see Love Actually! The only way in which The Holiday outperforms Love Actually is that 17% of those who’ve seen it didn’t enjoy it, compared to a slightly higher 20% for Love Actually. I can only assume this is because more people have been long sufferingly forced to watch Love Actually by enthusiastic family members.
The film I was most intrigued to see what people think of is White Christmas. It’s from 1954, stars Bing Crosby, and I’ve watched it every single Christmas since I was a child. 38% of Brits agree with me that it is excellent and quite possibly the best Christmas film ever committed to, well, film. (To be clear, this is not the question we asked and they do not agree this. They do however say that they’ve seen it and enjoyed it.) 8% of people have seen White Christmas and somehow didn’t enjoy it, which I personally find baffling. 34% of respondents haven’t seen this film and do not plan to see it, although I would perhaps encourage them to reconsider.
Turning from the classics to more contemporary Christmas offers, lots of (to my mind) iconic Netflix romcoms were not as popular as you might think. For example, take A Christmas Prince and The Princess Switch, both popular enough to generate multiple sequels from the streaming giant. Only 10% of respondents had seen and enjoyed A Christmas Prince, going up only slightly to 11% for The Princess Switch. Compared to more classic Christmas films, they were more divisive - the numbers who had seen these films and not enjoyed them were 4% and 5% respectively. This number is much lower than the proportion of people who have seen more commonly watched Christmas films and not enjoyed them, but makes up a higher percentage of those who’ve actually watched them in the first place. It’s possible that there has been lingering scepticism towards Netflix Originals: over 60% of people have not seen their films and do not plan to.
But, interestingly, things are perhaps starting to change. Falling For Christmas, this year’s release starring Lindsay Lohan, is already on a par with A Christmas Prince (2017) and The Princess Switch (2018), which is impressive considering it has had much less time to gain any traction. Will we see Falling For Christmas surpass these two Netflix stalwarts and even other Christmas favourites in later polls? My colleagues think not, but I enjoyed it a lot.
I’ve included a full chart of our results below, so that you can see how your favourite stacks up against other films. I’m off to go circle a bunch of things in the Radio Times and I hope you all enjoy the special scheduling over the Christmas period.
*most popular