The Lone Star state might not see a lot of snow, but one surefire way to know Christmastime is here: every TV station is airing a new holiday rom-com. Now, if you’ve got Hallmark movie fatigue like the rest of us, can we suggest revisiting a Yuletide favorite from the past?
As we do from time to time, we’re spotlighting an area of arts and culture relevant to Texans — taking a break from our year-round coverage of Texas sports betting — and counting down the top five Christmas movies according to state residents.
To make our shortlist, we started with a much longer one, identifying the 40 movies that generated the most web traffic, per the analytics platform AhRefs. After running all those titles through Google Trends, we identified the top 5 most popular movies in Texas based on search engine interest. See our full results below.
Rank | Christmas Movie | Interest Over Time |
1 | Home Alone | 10 |
T-2 | How The Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) | 9 |
T-2 | The Polar Express | 9 |
T-2 | National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation | 9 |
T-5 | Elf | 7 |
T-5 | A Christmas Story | 7 |
“Home Alone” is the most favorite Christmas movie in Texas. Written by the Godfather of ‘80s teen movies John Hughes, and directed by Christopher Columbus (who would later direct the first two “Harry Potter” films), the movie debuted across American on November 16th, 1990.
But believe it or not, the first reviews for “Home Alone” were only luke-warm. In fact, both Siskel and Ebert gave the beloved Christmas classic two thumbs down. But after “Home Alone” concluded 1990 as the second highest grossing movie of the year, the two Chicago-based critics actually did a follow-up segment on their popular show trying to account for how their initial opinion was so out of step with the general public.
Tied for the second favorite Christmas movie amongst Texas residents is “How The Grinch Stole Christmas.”
The live action adaptation of the Dr. Seuss kid’s book was one of the most highly anticipated releases of all time, and it cashed in at the box office in a big way. Not only was “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” the highest grossing release of 2000, it’s estimated to have sold over 48.1 million tickets in North America.
And much like the 1967 animated adaptation — in which “Frankenstein” star Boris Karloff narrates and provides the voice for The Grinch — the 2000 live action version of “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” has become standard TV viewing each Christmas Eve. In fact, since 2004, the animated and live action versions of the story are regularly shown as a double feature.
Tied for the second most popular film in Texas at Christmastime is “The Polar Express,” starring Tom Hanks and Tom Hanks and Tom Hanks! Thanks to the revolutionary-at-the-time motion capture technique employed by the filmmakers, the beloved American actor was able to inhabit a total of six different roles in the film — providing both the voice-work and the movement (which was then digitally animated).
Last but not least (in the tie for second) is "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation," the Chevy Chase classic in which all hell breaks loose after Clark Griswold doesn't receive his Christmas bonus.
Next up, the number five spot is another tie, occupied by the charmingly hilarious film “Elf,” which stars Will Ferrell as Buddy, a human being who sneaks into Santa’s sack one Christmas Eve and is subsequently raised as one of Saint Nick’s elves.
Finally, “A Christmas Story” also tied for fifth. Set in the 1940s, the “story” is really more of a series of vignettes involving a boy named Ralphie. This structure, however, is a huge reason why TNT runs a 24 hour marathon of “A Christmas Story” between December 24th and 25th each year. It works because no matter when you tune in, you can easily follow the relatable anecdotes of Ralphie and his family.
Author
Jeff Parker is an entertainment writer for BetTexas.com. A writer for film, television and the internet, Jeff is a life long movie buff, with a Masters Degree in Popular Culture. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he works full time as documentary filmmaker and producer.
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