The Best Christmas Movies on Amazon Prime Video in 2022

You can get almost every Christmas movie you want to watch on Amazon... if you have a ton of cash. But if you have an Amazon Prime Video subscription, it's harder to find a good holiday to watch without pulling out your credit card. Since most of the best Christmas movies are on other streaming services, you have to dig a little deeper to find ones on Prime Video. Or you can just sit where you are and let us do it for you, which we already did. 

Here are the best Christmas movies to watch with your Amazon Prime Video subscription in 2022. Some are classics that have been around for decades, some are cheesy nostalgic holiday movies from the 1990s, and some are movies for the whole family.

Arthur Christmas

This crowd-pleasing 2011 animated feature follows the tried-and-true formula of someone screwing up Christmas and someone else needing to save the holiday before everything goes to heck. This time it's Arthur (voiced by James McAvoy), Santa's youngest son, who must make things right after his dad forgets to give a present to one child. It won't blow your mind and the animation is OK, but it's a solid family film that doesn't involve Minions.

Miracle on 34th Street

Can't decide between a Christmas classic and an episode of Law & Order? Get both with this 1947 festive favorite, in which a man named Kris Kringle (hmm) takes a gig as a department store Santa Claus at Macy's, then surprises his coworkers and customers when he claims that he is the real Santa Claus. That leads to a court case to test his sanity, with the judge ruling that this movie will give you the Christmas spirit.

Christmas with the Kranks

Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis play a couple doing what I wish I could do just once in my lifetime: skip Christmas and go on vacation instead. Unfortunately, their neighbors find their decision appalling, and when their daughter announces she's coming by for a surprise Christmas celebration in a matter of hours, they have to prepare a Christmas party as if they were never planning on leaving. Hilarity flies down the chimney. Fun(-ish) fact: This was adapted from a John Grisham novel! 

More holiday TV guides:

• The Ultimate Guide to Christmas Movies and Specials
• The Best Christmas Movies in 2022 and Where to Watch Them
• The Best Christmas Movies on Netflix in 2022
• The Best New Christmas Movies in 2022
• Hallmark Christmas Movie Calendar 2022
• Lifetime Christmas Movie Calendar 2022

Surviving Christmas

Make no mistake: This movie is terrible. But it has Ben Affleck, James Gandolfini, Christina Applegate, and Catherine O'Hara in it. Three out of those four people are tolerable. It can't be THAT bad, right? Yes it is. Affleck plays a rich businessman who longs for some familial love over Christmas, so he pays the family living in his childhood home to pretend to be family. Money can buy you happiness, is the apparent message. (And hey, I ain't arguing.) Amazon has slim pickings, so you kind of have to take what you can get. Unfortunately, this is what you get.       

Santa Claus: The Movie

This corny holiday film comes from the decade when Hollywood had the gall to name movies [subject]: The Movie: The mid-1980s. Santa Claus: The Movie (as opposed to Santa Claus: The TV Show) shows us the origin of Santa Claus and his present-day problem of saving one of his elves (Dudley Moore) from the evil manipulations of a toy company executive (John Lithgow). They don't make movies like this anymore, and there's a good reason for that.         

Scrooged

In case you needed another Christmas Carol adaptation, this is the one that stars Bill Murray as a disillusioned TV executive who is visited by a bunch of ghosts who try to help him regain his spirit. One of the ghosts is played by Carol Kane, which is fun. —Allison Picurro

Last Holiday

There's no such thing as too many holiday rom-coms, and even if there were, this one would still make our list. Queen Latifah stars as a by-the-books single woman who, after learning she has only three weeks to live, decides to make the most of her last Christmas on Earth. She quits her boring department store job, takes a lavish European vacation, and, at some point, falls in love with LL Cool J. It's just silly enough to work. —Allison Picurro

A Christmas Carol (1984)

There are so many A Christmas Carol adaptations, and out of all them, this is definitely one of them. This one's good if you prefer fewer Muppets and more genuinely spooky ghosts. George C. Scott plays Scrooge here.                                    

It's a Wonderful Life

What did we say about Christmas movies about depressed people? This classic follows George Bailey (James Stewart), a man considering ending his life on Christmas Eve. He's visited by a guardian angel who shows him what life in his town would have been like had he not been there. This is a good one to watch if you want to feel good about humanity. —Allison Picurro