Christmas 2022 Wrap-Up | 2022 Christmas Movies

It is finally time to officially wrap up the 2022 Christmas Movie season. I watched 127 movies this year. A giant change from the 78 I watched in 2021. Even adding in the 13 movies I watched this past August to finish the 2021 season, that is still 36 more movies for 2022. While I didn’t have a difficult time fitting all of those movies into my schedule (Don’t ask me how I did it. I don’t know.), I am going to need to make some changes for the 2023 Christmas season.

In 2022, I added two new channels to my lineup. Great American Family and UPtv. I am going to drop UPtv from the 2023 lineup completely. I don’t think there was a single good movie on the channel this year. All of their movies were so boring that it was difficult for me to finish watching a lot of them. Also, I’m tired of seeing commercials for Gilmore Girls.

As for Great American Family, my current plans are to drop the channel with the possibility of watching the Candace Cameron Bure movie and the Danica McKellar movie. I firmly disagree with the politics of the channel and I can’t, in good conscience, keep watching it. There were a few good movies but I was also bombarded by commercials from Mike Lindell, aka the My Pillow guy. This tells me that GAF supports the stolen election lie. In addition, Bure has straight up said that they will not be airing any LGBTQ+ movies. She can spin it all she wants but I will not support a channel that is so intolerant.

Hallmark, Hallmark Movies & Mysteries, Lifetime, Netflix, Hulu, and Roku Channel will all be staying. If HBO Max survives the merger with Discovery, I will also keep them on my list. I would love to add Discovery+ and Oprah Winfrey Network (which is streamed on Discovery+) to the lineup but, again, we will need to see what 2023 brings for the app before I can make that call.

My goal for 2023 is to get back to the 90ish movies that I watched in 2021. I want to make sure that I have a good selection of movies to talk about but not so many that it makes my mental health spiral out of control. If you have any suggestions or ideas, you can leave a comment below or shoot me an email. Thank you for sticking with me through this crazy Christmas season. I have so many plans for the rest of this year and I hope that you will come along with me.

Top 10 Best Christmas Movies of 2022 | 2022 Christmas Movies

While my Worst Movie list is always difficult to write (it is just boring or is it BAD?), the Best Movie list is usually much easier. We don’t get nearly as many amazing movies as we should. Here is the list of my favorites.

10. Well Suited For Christmas
9. Santa Bootcamp
8. Hanukkah On Rye
7. Holiday Heritage
6. The Holiday Sitter
5. Ghosts of Christmas Always
4. Three Wise Men and a Baby
3. The Royal Nanny
2. Spirited
1. Violent Night

Honorable Mentions: A Christmas Mystery, The Hip Hop Nutcracker, Santa’s Got Style, Kirk Franklin’s The Night Before Christmas, The Holiday Stocking, Haul Out The Holly

I’m surprised at the number of movies I enjoyed this year. It probably had something to do with the sheer number of movies I watched but I’m glad I was able to find 17 movies that kept me going. I hope you enjoyed these movies as much as I did. Let me know what your favorite movies were this season in the comments.

Top 10 Worst Christmas Movies of 2022 | 2022 Christmas Movies

I watched a LOT of movies this season. Between November and December, I watched 127 Christmas movies. A majority of them fell into the “Wow, that’s boring” category. But there were some terribly awful movies as well. Here is my list of the Top 10 Worst Christmas Movies of 2022.

10. Long Lost Christmas
9. A Show-Stopping Christmas
8. A Maple Valley Christmas
7. The Holiday Dating Guide
6. My Favorite Christmas Tree
5. Another Christmas
4. Christmas Lucky Charm
3. A Tale Of Two Christmases
2. The Noel Diary
1. Christmas In Pine Valley

Dishonorable Mentions: The Holiday Swap, Sweet Navidad, A Christmas Masquerade, Aisle Be Home For Christmas, Scentsational Christmas, Christmas On The Rocks, Christmas In The Wilds

There we go. My 10 Worst Christmas Movie list. And Candace Cameron Bure’s piece of crap didn’t even make the list! Join me again tomorrow for my 10 Best Christmas Movies list.

Christmas In Wolf Creek | 2022 Christmas Movies

Christmas In Wolf Creek is the last of the Hallmark/Lifetime/UPtv/Great American Family Christmas movies. And I’m not going to lie. I didn’t finish it. Let me tell you why.

Samantha (Nola Martin) and Austin (Tim Rozon) are trying to figure out how they can still be together. Samantha lives in Wolf Creek, where she rescues animals, while Austin is a rancher. He doesn’t want to move into town and she doesn’t want to live on the ranch. Can they come to an agreement?

As I said, I didn’t finish this one. This is a direct sequel from Love In Wolf Creek, which came out in either October or November 2022. Since I didn’t watch that one, I didn’t understand a lot of the references they made in the Christmas one. People kept talking about how Samantha and Austin fell in love rescuing a wolf and rescuing animals in the wild in what they do. Yet they argued through the entire first half of this movie, which is where I stopped watching.

If you watched Love In Wolf Creek, you might like Christmas In Wolf Creek. But if, like me, you didn’t watch the first one, you might not enjoy the second one either. Starting with a sequel instead of the original isn’t bad, unless the second movie makes so many references to the first that you get lost. It sucks.

The Snowball Effect | 2022 Christmas Movies

Once again, we have a movie about weather forecasters. This time it’s UPtv’s The Snowball Effect. Let’s check it out.

Tara (Anjali Khurana) and Sam (Landon Moss) are both weather forecasters at competing networks. When a position opens up at a larger network, both of them apply for it. However, as they are traveling to their interviews, they get stuck in the town of Mistletoe thanks to an incoming snowstorm. In order to continue their interview, they each must submit a weather report to the network. While researching more about the town, they find out that the town no longer celebrates Christmas. They decide to find a way to bring the Christmas spirit back to Mistletoe.

So much of this movie is based on two people doing things, mostly without permission, to try to get the mayor to say yes to Christmas. For example, Tara arranges a group of carolers to sing outside the mayor’s house for what seems like hours while Sam plans a Christmas party without any actual venue or food or anything. Somehow Sam’s plan comes together and, while Tara’s plan seems like a failure at first, it also works out. The magic of movies.

While this wasn’t a completely awful movie, I don’t think it was good enough to recommend. Cloudy With A Chance Of Christmas was a much better movie. Go watch that instead.

An Eclectic Christmas | 2022 Christmas Movies

An Eclectic Christmas isn’t just difficult to spell, it’s also difficult to enjoy. There are still two more UPtv Christmas movies to watch. I can’t wait until they are over.

Kim (Hannah Galway) is a fitness instructor living in Los Angeles. When her beloved Aunt Freida (Jill Frappier) passes away, Kim returns to her hometown to sell Freida’s antique shop. However, Freida has left instructions in her will that some of the shop’s items be distributed to certain townsfolk. With the help of her ex-boyfriend, Scott (Jeremy Walmsley), Kim must solve Freida’s riddles to complete her job.

There are a lot of problems with this movie. The big one is why Scott and Kim broke up. She wanted to move to Los Angeles and, even though they were engaged, he stayed in their small town because he didn’t want to hold her back? That just isn’t a reasonable excuse. If it was a sick relative or maybe a family business or something like that, it would make sense. But because he didn’t want to hold her back? Why would you even get engaged if that was how you felt?

Next up are Aunt Freida’s riddles. Most of them make zero sense and we don’t get a good explanation for the solution. And they are the bulk of the movie. We watch Kim and Scott randomly travel from place to place to deliver items and hear the recipient talk about their history with Freida. Also, they make it sound like Kim grew up in this town. After all, she was engaged to Scott. But then she seems to know little to nothing about the town’s traditions. Traditions that her aunt seemed to be very involved in. The plot holes are so big you could drive a truck through them.

I wouldn’t recommend watching An Eclectic Christmas. Galway and Walmsley aren’t terrible actors but they aren’t given anything good to work with. I would like to see them in a better written movie. This one just isn’t it.

Sappy Holiday | 2022 Christmas Movies

You know, when a movie has a love triangle, both of the suitors should be viable options. Sappy Holiday doesn’t do that. Let me tell you about it.

Joy (Vanessa Sears) is a sous chef in New York. She is working hard to get a promotion to executive chef. Her boyfriend, Gabe (Colton Royce), invites her to his family’s mansion for Christmas in order to propose to her. Driving to the mansion in a snowstorm, Joy spins out her car and crashes into a snowbank. She is saved by James (Jon McLaren), who takes her to his family’s maple farm while she waits for her car to be fixed. However, Joy finds her true happiness at the maple farm.

So, the love triangle is Joy, who is nicknamed JJ by James, James and Gabe. Gabe is an utter tool. Every time Joy talks to him, he is a dreadful person. He puts his mother’s wants over his girlfriend’s needs. Even if Joy didn’t find James, she should have dumped Gabe anyway.

No, I don’t think you should watch Sappy Holiday. It’s slow, it’s boring, and none of the men are particularly good. Joy should quit her job and both men and figure out something better to do. She deserves much better than any of them.

Santa's Got Style | 2022 Christmas Movies

Franco Lo Presti must really like modeling. In the beginning of the Christmas movie season, he was modeling suits in Well Suited For Christmas. Now he’s not only modeling suits but also being a store’s social media personality in Santa’s Got Style.

Madison (Kathryn Davis) is a department store executive tasked with finding the store’s next holiday promo. She decides to go with a hip, young, stylish Santa. Her best friend, Ethan (Franco Lo Presti), is unable to find her a model that fits her standards so he transforms into Rafe Hollyfield, his hot cousin. Things go awry when Madison wants Ethan and Rafe in two places at once. Will Ethan lose his best friend over this?

I thought this was actually a pretty clever movie. While we have seen the “one person pretending to be two” plot in other romcoms, I don’t think we’ve ever seen it in a Christmas movie. Though, if he was really able to get the Santa beard and wig on and off that fast, maybe he should be hired as a makeup artist instead!

For most of this season, UPtv has had fairly boring movies. Things that are perfectly fine to watch though you could easily find something better. Santa’s Got Style is one of those better movies. I think Lo Presti is quickly going to become one of Christmas’s leading men. He definitely has the charisma for it. Keep an eye out for him in the future!

A Royal Christmas Match | 2022 Christmas Movies

As I think most people know, there are a lot of royal Christmas movies. There are so many tiny kingdoms with princes and princesses looking for love. Well, UPtv gave us another one in A Royal Christmas Match.

Princess Camille (Jordana Largy) of Morgana is traveling to the United States to try to set up an exchange program with her country’s university. If she fails, Morgana University will be forced to close. Rhett (Matthew MacCaull), a professor at PSU, is assigned to escort her around the American college. When Camille finds out that her father hired Ben to babysit her, she wonders what his true motive is.

I have to admit that the plot for A Royal Christmas Match is more interesting than most royal Christmas movies. Camille is set on saving Morgana University and she isn’t letting anything get in her way. When Rhett distracts her with Christmas events, she continually tells him that she wants to talk to the other professors at the college and that she really wants to set up the exchange program. She is one determined princess!

It’s also interesting that both Camille and her friend, Duchess Teodora (Ashley Alexander), have PhDs. They are in different subjects but it takes a lot of work to get a PhD. How in the world did a princess and a duchess have enough time away from their royal duties to attend college for that long? Morgana really is set up differently from every other country with a royal family.

Amazingly, A Royal Christmas Match was rather watchable. I don’t think UPtv gave us a lot of good content this year but this was one of them. Go forth and watch, good people.

Christmas On The Rocks | 2022 Christmas Movies

Here we are with another Christmas movie with a stupid title. Christmas On The Rocks sounds like it should be about bartending or a breakup or something. Nope. It has nothing to do with any of those. I’m really not sure how the title relates to the movie. And that isn’t the only stupid thing about it.

Jennifer and Sarah (Lyla Porter-Follows) are twin sisters. Sarah is supposed to be the event planner for an important corporate Christmas party at a ski lodge. However, she broke her leg the day before she was supposed to be there. Jennifer pretends to be Sarah and takes her place at the ski lodge.

This is such a dumb movie. At no point in time does Sarah do anything to help her poor sister. We only see Sarah via video calls and all she does is apologize for getting injured. There’s never any suggestions on how to fix problems. As a matter of fact, there’s no reason that Sarah couldn’t have gone with Jennifer to work the event. (Besides the fact that the same actress plays both roles and I don’t think UPtv has the budget for that kind of special effects.) She only broke her leg! Crutches are a thing!

No. Don’t watch Christmas On The Rocks. Throw it into the avalanche and forget it ever existed. And that is being nice.