How the Christmas Movies bracket works
Rank Christmas movies without dragging anything into rows. You get one matchup at a time — Home Alone or Die Hard? Elf or It's a Wonderful Life? — and after 23 picks the bracket has a champion, with everything else placed by how far it got. A straight list invites you to hedge. A matchup does not, and that is what makes the final 24-deep order worth screenshotting.
This bracket runs 5 rounds at the default 24-slot size (Round of 24, Round of 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship), with every one of the 24 films in the field. 24 is not a power of two, so 8 of them draw a first-round bye — spread evenly across the draw rather than handed to whoever happens to land at the top of it. Because the draw is shuffled, two people playing the same bracket rarely face the same matchups. You can also play it at 8 or 16 slots for a shorter or longer run.
23 picks, 5 rounds
- Round of 248 matchups
- Round of 168 matchups
- Elite 84 matchups
- Final Four2 matchups
- Championship1 matchup
Roughly 2-3 minutes start to finish.
All 24 entrants
All 24 entrants are listed below, including Home Alone, Die Hard, Elf and It's a Wonderful Life.
Home Alone
1990
Die Hard
1988
Elf
2003
It's a Wonderful Life
1946
A Christmas Story
1983
The Nightmare Before Christmas
1993
Love Actually
2003
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
1989
The Polar Express
2004
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
2000
A Charlie Brown Christmas
1965
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
1964
The Santa Clause
1994
Miracle on 34th Street
1947
White Christmas
1954
Scrooged
1988
The Muppet Christmas Carol
1992
Jingle All the Way
1996
Bad Santa
2003
The Holiday
2006
Klaus
2019
A Christmas Carol
2009
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
1992
Gremlins
1984
Would rather group them than rank them? Open all 24 in the tier list maker and sort them into S, A, B, C, D and F tiers instead — same entrants, no matchups.
How everyone else ranked them
Aggregated from 6 completed Christmas Movies brackets. Win rate is the share of head-to-head matchups each entrant has won across every play.
- 1
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
15W - 5L · won 1 bracket
75%
win rate
- 2
It's a Wonderful Life
5W - 2L · won 1 bracket
71%
win rate
- 3
Home Alone
5W - 2L
71%
win rate
- 4
The Santa Clause
8W - 4L · won 1 bracket
67%
win rate
- 5
The Muppet Christmas Carol
4W - 2L · won 1 bracket
67%
win rate
- 6
A Christmas Story
7W - 4L · won 1 bracket
64%
win rate
- 7
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
4W - 3L
57%
win rate
- 8
Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
5W - 4L · won 1 bracket
56%
win rate
- 9
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
6W - 5L
55%
win rate
- 10
A Charlie Brown Christmas
6W - 5L
55%
win rate
Getting a ranking you actually agree with
- 1Pick the film you would actually rewatch tonight, not the one with the better reputation.
- 2The default run puts all 24 films in the draw. Short on time? Drop to 16 slots — a quicker run over a random 16 of them.
- 3Use undo the moment you regret a pick. One reflex answer in an early round can knock out a favourite before it gets going.
Christmas Movies bracket FAQ
How many films are in the Christmas Movies bracket?
The pool holds 24 films. A default run puts all of them in the draw and takes 23 picks across 5 rounds: Round of 24, Round of 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship. 8 entrants start with a first-round bye, spread evenly through the draw. Other field sizes are available too — 8, 16, 24 slots.
Which films are included?
Home Alone, Die Hard, Elf, It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Love Actually, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, The Polar Express, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, plus 12 more. Every entrant is listed further down this page with its artwork.
How long does the rank Christmas movies take?
About 2-3 minutes — 23 choices at the default size, or 7 if you drop to a 8-slot bracket. No account is needed, and you can abandon a run at any point without losing anything.
Can I turn the result into S/A/B tiers?
Both are here, and the bracket is closer to a tier list than it looks. It ends with a champion, a runner-up and then every other film grouped by the round it went out in — which is exactly a set of tiers, decided by 23 direct comparisons rather than by your first guess at a layout. What it deliberately does not do is claim a precise gap between two films that never met. If you would rather place the films into S through F rows yourself, the tier list maker loads all 24 of them at bracketranker.com/tier-list-maker.
Can I compare my order with other people's?
Every completed bracket feeds the Christmas Movies community results page, which aggregates win rates across all plays and tracks how often each of the 24 entrants takes the title. It updates continuously, so it moves as more people play.
What if a film I wanted is missing?
Use the bracket maker: add your own films, name it, and share the link so other people play the same field. That is the route to take when this pool of 24 is missing something you would have picked, or when you want a version scoped to one era, label or franchise.