Christmas 2024 Wrap-Up

And now it is time to wrap up the 2024 Christmas season. It felt both hectic and laid back at the same time. I’m not sure how that happened!

This year I watched 74 Christmas movies. That is probably why this season felt more laid back. This was the the lowest number of movies I have watched since I moved from my advent calendar format. 2023 was 92 movies, 2022 was 127, 2021 was 78, and 2020 was 86. I think this is because Hallmark moved some of their new releases to their Hallmark+ streaming service, which I did not subscribe to this year. That cut at least seven movies from the schedule. It was also frustratingly difficult to find new movies this time around. Great American Family continues to change their movies after they have released their schedule. Movies they have announced to air on one date will be replaced by a different movie and air on a different date. It was so frustrating.

Speaking of Great American Family, I am going to cut them from the list of movies next year. While I wanted to continue to watch Candace Cameron-Bure and Danica McKellar, almost all of the movies on the channel are so boring and difficult to sit through. I hope that their 2025 movies don’t turn political but it feels like that is the way the channel is heading.

Since I am going to cut out GAF, I am going to spend more energy trying to find movies on other streaming channels. I didn’t watch anything on Roku, Disney+ (though I did watch one Hulu movie), or Peacock. There was also a locally-made movie released in theaters that I was hoping to go see but I couldn’t make it in time. And, who knows, maybe I will sign up for Hallmark+ this year. We’ll have to wait and see what their streaming-only releases are.

As always, please feel free to let me know if there is a streaming channel that you’d like me to cover. I know there are a million of them out there now. There has to be a channel with some great Christmas movies that I don’t know about.

Best Christmas Movies of 2024

If you have read most of my Christmas movie reviews this season, you’ll know that a majority of the movies were super boring. They were so boring that it made it really difficult to keep watching them. (And I didn’t watch the last five of the season!) However, this is the list of the bright, shiny Christmas lights that kept me going even when I wanted to stop early. These are the best Christmas movies of 2024.

BeBe Winans’ We Three Kings - It’s rare for me to want a Christmas movie to be longer. This was one that did.
All I Need For Christmas - The movie that proved that adults can apologize to each other when they screw up.
Hanukkah On The Rocks - Hallmark airs one Hanukkah movie each season. It is amazing when the movie teaches about the various Hanukkah traditions.
The 5-Year Christmas Party - Sometimes a movie needs to be a slow burn. This wouldn’t have worked any other way.
Debbie Macomber’s Joyful Mrs. Miracle - I never thought I would love a Mrs. Miracle movie. I was wrong.
Sugarplummed - My favorite movie of the season. Anyone who disagrees is just plain wrong.

Honorable Mentions:
Holiday Crashers - This one was just plain fun.
A Christmas Castle Proposal - A sweet little change-up to the prince trope. Though it may have slipped onto the honorable mentions list because it’s a sequel.

There were a few other movies that were decent but not quite good enough to make the Best list. These are the ones that really did make me think “Oh, maybe the next movie will be this good too!” instead of making me want to cancel my streaming subscriptions. I hope Christmas movies keep getting better instead of worse. Next up, my big Christmas wrap-up post where I talk about my plans for Christmas 2025.

Worst Christmas Movies of 2024

While I don’t normally like to start the year out on a negative note, I want to get the worst movie list out of the way so we can talk about the good movies this year! A lot of the movies this year weren’t bad, just boring. I’d hate to put them on the worst list for being boring. With that said, let’s get into the worst Christmas movies of 2024.

A ‘90s Christmas - When you link your movie to a specific decade, the viewers are looking for nostalgia. This movie only gives confusion.
Five Gold Rings - A mystery movie that completely fell apart by the second ring.
Christmas On The Alpaca Farm - This was a movie written by people who heard of alpacas but never actually saw one.
Tails Of Christmas - Never, ever make dogs the focus of your movie. It always ends up making your movie bad.
Mistletoe & Matrimony - I wasn’t sure about putting this on the list because it wasn’t completely terrible. Then I remembered the bride wanted to book a horse-drawn carriage at the last minute for a Christmas Eve wedding in Chicago.
Christmas By Candlelight - Bad script, bad plot, bad acting. There isn’t much more to say.
Christmas With The Singhs - This one wouldn’t have been on the list if the writers didn’t make the Singhs so unbearable. It’s possible to make a “sucky in-laws” movie without making them whiny babies.
Leah’s Perfect Gift - I almost rage-quit this movie. We need a sequel where Leah leaves the awful family before she marries their son and finds someone awesome who actually loves her.

Dishonorable Mentions:
Deck The Walls - While this movie wasn’t awful, the product placement was so bad and so in-your-face that it gets a dishonorable mention.
Sincerely, Truly Christmas - When the main female character acts like a child, it’s an immediate ‘no, thank you’ from me.

There you have it. These are the movies I thought were the worst this year. Let me know if you want a separate list for the movies I thought were the most boring. There were a lot of them! Coming up next: The BEST movies!

Christmas On The Alpaca Farm | 2024 Christmas Movies

I am nearing the end of the Christmas movies on my list and I will be very happy when this is over. I was looking forward to Christmas On The Alpaca Farm because how can you screw up a movie about alpacas, right? You make it not ab0ut alpacas.

Jess Hilliard (Kirsten Comerford) wants to create a line of sustainable high fashion. When the New York City fashion label she works for scraps her line of alpaca fleece sweaters, she quits to enter a Christmas competition with her own designs. Since the Flannery Farm, where she got her alpaca fleece previously, had to fire their entire staff when the sweater line was scrapped, Jess goes to help Andrew (Matt Wells) and his daughter, Georgia (Ai Barrett), harvest the fleece.

This movie should have been about a city girl being forced to work on an alpaca farm for some reason and she fails, at first, before falling in love with the animals and learning how to care for them and maybe she makes them silly little hats or scarves or something and, in the end, she falls in love with the alpaca man. But no, this movie had to be about fashion. They throw around the term high fashion a few times and nothing here is high fashion. Luxury, yes. High fashion, no. Those are two very different things.

I’m also annoyed that Andrew kept pulling this “You can’t blend my alpaca fleece with ANYTHING!” There are, like, 20 alpacas on his farm that we see. How much fleece does he really think they can generate? Google tells me that an average sweater uses about a pound of alpaca fleece and the average alpaca produces 5 to 10 pounds of fleece per year. Even though Jess is making some chunky sweaters, let’s be nice and say she’s only using one pound. And let’s say these alpacas are amazing at producing fleece so each one gives us 10 pounds. (Yes, I’m being super generous.) Ten pounds of fleece times twenty alpacas is 200 pounds of fleece. Each sweater takes one pound so Jess can make, at most, 200 sweaters per year with this fleece. That might be good for a starting point but there were big companies wanting to sell these sweaters. 200 sweaters per year isn’t a sustainable business plan.

Was there anything good about this movie? I guess Georgia was kinda cute. Ooh, maybe we can have a Georgia & The Alpacas movie and just forget about the adults. That could be adorable!

Rating: These sweaters were ugly and boring too

The Holiday Junkie | 2024 Christmas Movies

There are some years that we get a really sad Christmas movie. A movie so sad that I’m not sure why anyone would want to release it during the Christmas season. The Holiday Junkie just might make that list.

Andie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) ran a holiday decorating company with her mother. After her mother passes away, Andie is left to run the company on her own. With help from Mason (Brian Hallisay), Andie works through her grief as she plans some epic holiday events.

This movie was written and directed by Jennifer Love Hewitt in memory of her own mother, who passed in 2012. Keeping that in mind, you’ll understand why I say this movie is so sad. There are a number of scenes where Hewitt breaks down in tears and you can’t help but feel bad for her. I think she was able to feel this vulnerable on screen because Mason in played by her real life husband, who she has been married to since 2013. The feelings that you see on screen feel so real and so raw. Of course, this is good for the movie but it may be very triggering to some people. Especially this time of year.

While the acting and the story are both amazing, it is a little annoying that almost all of the main characters have some sort of big trauma. Sure, everyone has some sort of trauma but this is a Christmas movie. We don’t need 3 out of the 4 main characters being traumatized over relationships. To be honest, it would have been nice to have more than just best friend Darren (Greg Grunberg) as the comic relief. A little more levity may have made this feel a bit more appropriate for the Christmas season.

Rating: Bring a whole box of tissues with you

A Very Merry Beauty Salon | 2024 Christmas Movies

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a beauty salon-themed Christmas movie. I definitely haven’t seen a black beauty salon-themed Christmas movie. I hope that Lifetime doesn’t mess it up with A Very Merry Beauty Salon.

Sienna (Tia Mowry), who owns Divine Beauty Salon, does a lot of charitable work for her community. Now she is being honored at the annual Tinsel Ball in Atlanta. As she prepares for the ball, she meets Lawrence (RonReaco Lee). He is the CEO of his family’s wine business, which has is not only opening a shop near Sienna’s beauty salon, they are also co-sponsoring the ball. The sparks begin to fly between Sienna and Lawrence but will business and family get between them?

While I think that A Very Merry Beauty Salon was a wonderful movie, it was also very slow. Instead of action, we get a lot of scenes of people just sitting around talking. I think the only action montage we get is of Sienna, Ella (Ashli Auguillard), and Miss Kimmy (Cocoa Brown) working on their clients’ hair. There is a scene where Sienna and Lawrence are practicing a dance but I wouldn’t really call that a montage. As a result, the movie does seem to drag a little. Which is sad because the acting is amazing and the plot could have been so much more interesting. It felt like the writers weren’t really sure how to move the actors from scene to scene.

Despite the slowness of the movie, I do think it is watchable. As a matter of fact, I think I would love to see a series about Sienna, Ella, and Miss Kimmy. They were such fun to be around. We need more of them.

Rating: Can I come to the salon?

Make Or Bake Christmas | 2024 Christmas Movies

Ooh. I don’t think we’ve had any baking Christmas movies this year, have we? Make Or Bake Christmasshould fix that! Right?

Emma (Jasmine Aivaliotis) works for Leslie (Vivica A. Fox), a lifestyle business mogul. When she hears about up-and-coming family bakery Sugar Bakers, run by Denise Sugarbaker (Jackée Harry), Leslie sends Emma to go undercover as a seasonal employee to convince the family to sell the business.

Man, this movie isn’t about baking. It’s about corporate espionage. Well, on the bright side, it was a fairly interesting movie. I think my favorite part is when all of the employees went out for karaoke night and they all sang like normal people. They didn’t make anyone an outstanding singer. It gave the movie a touch of normalcy.

The worst part really was how awful Leslie was to Emma. We all know terrible corporate bosses. We don’t really need them in our Christmas movies. And we didn’t really get a “come to the light” moment for her. She seemed less awful at the end but we don’t know that she isn’t still a horrible boss to everyone else.

Overall, it’s not a terrible movie. I have seen worse. But I don’t think I would watch it a second time.

Rating: Come for the cookies, stay for the karaoke

BeBe Winans' We Three Kings | 2024 Christmas Movies

In past years, the Lifetime Christmas movie offerings have been awful. Somehow they have really been coming around this season. BeBe Winans' We Three Kings is another hit for the channel. I am definitely surprised.

Three years after their mother’s death, the three King sisters - Lydia (Lisa Berry), Gracie (Faith Wright), and Abigail (Bethany Brown) - have lost their connection with each other. After their father, musical legend Lincoln King (BeBe Winans), gets into a car accident on an icy road, the sisters are forced back together to deal with their grief and heal their family wounds.

This was such a touching movie. I’m overlooking the minor flaws in the script because everything else was so good. I loved the way the sisters argued, the way sisters do, and were able to look back and apologize properly for the terrible things they said. If I needed to say something bad about the movie, honestly, it would be that it wasn’t long enough. I would have liked them to spend a little more time healing the sisterly bond instead of it simply being an apology with helping out at the store. But nothing was really lost without seeing that. It just felt short, that’s all.

Rating: I would like a sequel but I’m not sure how they would do it

Sincerely, Truly Christmas | 2024 Christmas Movies

Well, the plot of Sincerely, Truly Christmas is not what I expected. And it’s pretty dumb. Sigh.

Christina (Paula Brancati) is an event planner for a large music streaming platform. Just before Christmas, she gets fired for insulting an up-and-coming singer that the company wanted to use for their Christmas song charity release. In order to get her job back, Christina must get Dan Copen (Howard Hoover), a Christmas one-hit-wonder who has become reclusive, to re-record his song for the charity release. It seems that the only way she can contact him is through Robert (Jake Epstein), a realtor who is having problems with his son. In addition, Christina made a badly worded wish that now forces people around her to tell her what they really want for Christmas.

I don’t really want to talk about this movie. I hate Christina. She wants to lives in some sort of la-la land where people always say exactly what they say or feel with zero consequences. She literally barges into her boss’ meeting without stopping to see if they were on a conference call or even what the meeting was about to openly say a singer is bad at singing. Please remember that she works for a music streaming service. Then she’s surprised and annoyed that she got fired. I swear Christina is a child.

The movie doesn’t get any better. It’s almost entirely Christina doing something stupid then feeling bad for herself when there are consequences. Let’s pretend this never happened.

Rating: I want this movie to be removed from my brain for Christmas.

Christmas In The Spotlight | 2024 Christmas Movies

A bit of a surprise this year - we have two Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce-themed Christmas movies. Lifetime is first out of the gate with Christmas In The Spotlight. Let’s see how they did.

Bowyn Sykes (Jessica Lord) is a world-famous pop star. Drew “Gonzo” Gonville (Laith Wallschleger) is a professional football player with the Bombers. After Drew sneaks his niece backstage after a Bowyn concert to meet the singer, he posts on Instagram asking Bowyn out. With some prodding from her manager, Bowyn agrees to a low-key secret date. They try to keep their relationship secret but, eventually, people start to find out. Will their relationship last being in the public eye?

Yet another surprise - I thought this movie was actually decent. Sure, the crowds of people were obviously fake (I wish they spent more money on computer graphics) but the acting was pretty good, the script wasn’t cringey, and everything felt rather plausible. Was it a “true life story” of the Swift/Kelce relationship? No. It was never meant to be. But it did keep my attention and kept me entertained the whole time. What more could I ask for?

Rating: Touchdown!