Why new Christmas movies don’t hit the same (yet)

What is it about certain Christmas movies that make them hit, and others just disappear into the Netflix shuffle

We've all got that one movie that sort of flips the switch. The one that we don't just watch, but always return to

We're gonna cover a bunch in this video. Merry Christmas. But, for me, that movie has always been a Christmas story

No, no, I want an official writer to cover an ice cream. Do you want to get rid of my little ice cream

that movie isn't just part of christmas for me it is christmas and maybe not because it's the best

christmas movie ever made but because it's been there every single year of my life i just couldn't

escape it the 24-hour marathons on cable my dad quoting you'll shoot your eye out kid the easily

recognizable narrator's voice drifting in from another room it's almost like a holiday muscle

memory. And I'm not the only A Christmas Story purist out there, it's become a

Christmas phenomenon. But why? A Christmas Story has basically been running on a

loop since 1983 and it's not just nostalgia, it's ritual. Even if I wasn't

paying attention it was always on somewhere You walk into the living room and there Ralphie again fantasizing about that Red Rider BB gun like the fate of the world depends on it I could drop into that movie at any point and know exactly what happening That the weird beauty of Christmas movies They don

just exist as stories, but they exist as markers of time in our lives. They're stitched into the

fabric of the season itself. They play in the background while we wrap gifts and decorate trees

We don't watch them to find out what happens, we watch them to feel what happens. It's sort of

like comfort food a cinematic security blanket back before streaming there was a kind of unspoken

schedule you didn't choose when christmas movies showed up they just found you it's a wonderful

life rudolph the red-nosed reindeer home alone they'd air a few times and if you missed it you

missed it that made watching them an event and that repetition that sense of collective timing

is what turns certain films into tradition it wasn't just the movie itself it was the ritual

we built around it. The commercials, the hot cocoa, the same couch

the same people. You watched it enough years in a row that it became less of a movie

and more of a memory trigger. And there's actually some science behind that comfort

Our brains love patterns, especially familiar ones that make us feel safe

When we recognize something we seen a hundred times like the opening of a Christmas story our brains release little hits of dopamine the same chemical tied to pleasure and reward it the brain way of saying oh yeah

i know this we're good that's part of why re-watching things can feel so satisfying

it's not just nostalgia it's biology doing its thing now this is the part that gets tricky

because there are new christmas movies every year lots of them and i know some of them are great i

for one loved claws, but they don't really hit the same way yet. And it's not really their fault

The way we consume movies has changed. Instead of being stuck with whatever's on TV, we have

endless options. There's no real anticipation, no scarcity, no yearly buildup. A new movie drops

on a streaming platform, you watch it once, and then move on. Those older films had the advantage

of time and repetition. They were there every year whether you wanted them or not, and that

persistence I think made them iconic. New ones get buried under a wave of content before they can

earn that same kind of history. So it's not necessarily that they're all missing that

Christmas magic. Maybe they just haven't had enough Christmases yet. What makes these movies

special isn surprise it consistency They one of the few things in life that never really change The jokes still land the same way the snow still falls the ending still makes you feel something warm and familiar And that why we need them Every year is different New challenges

new people, maybe even new losses. But when you press play on A Christmas Story or Home Alone

you're stepping into a space that stayed exactly the same since you were a kid. And that's a rare

kind of comfort. It's not about reliving the past, it's about returning to something that always

welcomes you back. It's cinematic time travel with a warm blanket and a mug of hot cocoa

So maybe that's the real secret. Christmas movies aren't born, they're built. Built over years of

repetition, nostalgia, and love. A Christmas story didn't become a tradition overnight. It took decades

of reruns, families, and memories to bake itself into our collective DNA. And who knows, maybe the

next generation's classics are being made right now. They just don't know it yet. Someday, someone's

going to look back on one of them and say, man, it just doesn't feel like Christmas until we watch

that. Because that's what these movies do best. They grow up with us and they stay the same. So

we don't have to, but Hey, we'd love to hear from you. What movie isn't technically a Christmas

movie, but feels like one to you. Let us know in the comments. And as always

thanks for watching. And we'll see you next time on how it hits