Everyone Is Making a Horrible Mistake in How They Watch Christmas Movies. Here's How to Avoid It.

Last week, to formally consecrate the beginning of the holiday season, my fiancée threw on Christmas With the Kranks. The wretched 2004 Tim Allen film notched an impressively bad 5 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, with most critics complaining about the screenplay's awkward marriage of lifeless Middle American sentimentality with the sort of visual gags you might find in Progressive commercials. Christmas With the Kranks is not making the Criterion Collection anytime soon, and I think it's fair to say that there are better ways to spend a winter evening, but if you value the season like we do--and intend to have a Christmas movie on-screen at all times until New Year's--then you must ration the heavy hitters of the genre for the premium slots on the calendar. Or, in other words, if you want to watch Home Alone on Dec. 22, then you might be forced to spend a night with Tim Allen on Dec. 5. We all know what the classics are. The Mount Rushmore of Christmas movies, at least according to mainstream millennial opinion, are Elf, A Charlie Brown Christmas, the Chuck Jones–animated How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and the aforementioned Home Alone.