'I've watched alllll the Christmas offerings on streaming. Here are the ones worth your time.'

There is nothing I love more than a Christmas movie, and with approximately 200 different streaming services available in 2023, there is truly no shortage.

Thankfully, most of the classics are available with just a few clicks (my holy trinity is Elf, The Holiday and Love Actually), but you're going to need to fill the rest of the holiday period with festive goodness. This must be why the streamers pump out yearly Christmas content like it's going out of fashion.

But it can be overwhelming, especially when these kinds of films are not often ~prestige~. Where to begin? What to avoid? This year, I've got you.

Firstly, if you're after films that are bad in a wonderful, mindless, fun way...

• A Christmas Prince 
• A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding
• A Christmas Prince 3: The Royal Baby
• The Princess Switch
• The Princess Switch: Switched Again
• The Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star

Sure, roll your eyes, but you have to admit they're far more entertaining than that Brooke Shields movie set in a Scottish castle, or the one where Kat Graham has a magical advent calendar. You don't remember their names either, do you? But we all remember A Christmas Prince!

However, if you're looking for fresh Christmas content starring people other than Vanessa Hudgens, I have compiled a list of the movies and shows I've returned to year after year. 

Yes, they're now on regular rotation right alongside the real classics:

Home for Christmas.

Home for Christmas. Image: Netflix.

This is Netflix's antidote to its many, many silly Christmas films about made-up Eastern European monarchies and magic, and it's great.

Home for Christmas is a Norwegian rom-com series starring Ida Elise Broch as Johanne, a 30-year-old single nurse whose family keep hounding her about her getting a boyfriend.

Johanne already leads a busy, fulfilling life: She works a lot and cares for her patients, keeps up with her (mostly married-with-children) friends and helps out with her family’s drama, both big and small. But fed up by feeling left out and pitied for her singleness, she blurts out at a family lunch that she has a boyfriend, actually, and she’ll bring him to the family’s Christmas Eve dinner.

What follows are six episodes of funny, heart-warming, twisty and addictive viewing as Johanne spends 24 days trying to find him.

But Home for Christmas takes that fairly stale premise and makes it fresh. It flips typical rom-com traits on their heads and becomes about so much more than finding a date. Honestly, Johanne doesn't even really seem to care about that part either.

As soon as I finished it, I wanted to watch it again — which probably explains why it was followed by a second season only a year after its 2019 release.

Home for Christmas is streaming on Netflix.

A Sunburnt Christmas.

A Sunburnt Christmas. Image: Stan.

I love watching snowfall in New York City as good-looking people kiss under conveniently placed mistletoe.

But that's not our Christmas.

A Sunburnt Christmas, as the name suggests, gives us our Christmas. Well, hopefully your Christmas doesn't involve a runaway criminal. But it takes place in Australia when it's really, really hot, so you know what I mean.

The film tells the story of a single mum (Ling Cooper Tang) and her three children Hazel (Tatiana Goode), Tom (Eaden McGuinness) and Daisy (Lena Nankivell), who live on a struggling outback property in rural South Australia.

With their mum still grieving the unexpected death of her husband a year earlier, Hazel and the younger kids try to delay the foreclosure of the farm when the bank's assistant manager comes knocking a few days before Christmas. 

And then things get a real shakeup when Daryl (Daniel Henshall), a runaway crim dressed as Santa, crashes into their property and becomes part of the family.

If you've tired of the American sap in every other corny Christmas offering, let A Sunburnt Christmas be the funny, brutally Australian underdog story to cleanse your pallette.

A Sunburnt Christmas is streaming on Stan.

Dash & Lily.

Dash & Lily. Image: Netflix.

Dash & Lily is a Christmas-themed teen rom-com that will thaw even the coldest of hearts.

The eight-episode series stars Austin Abrams and Midori Francis as New York teenagers Dash and Lily, who are both spending the holiday period without their parents.

With her brothers encouragement, Lily leaves a red notebook containing a bunch of literary clues on a shelf in the Salinger section of her favourite bookstore, The Strand. 

Dash, a fellow book nerd, stumbles across the book, and intrigued, begins to follow Lily's scavenger hunt. 

They continue to communicate through the notebook, sharing their dreams, visiting each other's favourite places, challenging each other to complete a series of dares, and, duh, falling in love.

It's got both the classic vibes of films like You've Got Mail and the modern vibe of something like To All The Boys I've Loved Before.

It has eight episodes, and it's such a delight you'll want to get through them all in one go.

Dash & Lily is streaming on Netflix.

Noelle.

Noelle. Image: Disney+.

Noelle received pretty middling reviews when it was released in 2019, but Christmas movies aren't made for critics. Sorry. They're made for us to watch in the evenings of a stressful time of year, maybe with a drink in our hands and definitely with zero thoughts in our heads.

And, after coming to terms with the stupid amount of bad puns, I really liked it.

In the film, Santa has died and his son Nick (Bill Hader) is destined to wear the big red suit and deliver presents, even though he has no desire to inherit the family business. His sister, Noelle (Anna Kendrick) tells him to take a weekend off to avoid burnout – now that is relatable, Santa – but he instead goes totally AWOL.

Noelle must then venture out of the North Pole to find him, because there's no way she can be Santa instead. Even though she would like the job, and even though she would be good at the job. 

It then transfers into both a fish-out-of-water and buddy cop comedy, as she teams up with a private investigator (Kingsley Ben-Adir) who is desperately in need of some Christmas cheer.

You can see where the entire film is going, right?

Noelle is corny but sweet, visually stunning, and leagues above most streaming films by way of its cast performances. This really is Kendrick's film, and she is just so charming.

Oh, and most importantly, you'll learn that Santa can be a girl boss too.

Noelle is streaming on Disney+.

Something From Tiffany's.

Something From Tiffany's. Image: Prime Video.

I've come to realise I am this film's biggest fan, and I'm fine with that.

It stars Zoey Deutsch, an underrated and incredibly charming rom-com asset, as Rachel. She is happy enough with her boyfriend Gary (Ray Nicholson), but not ready for a big commitment like marriage just yet.

Meanwhile, Ethan and Vanessa (played by the offensively good-looking pair of Kendrick Sampson and Shay Mitchell) are just about to take the plunge. 

However, when a mix-up of gifts sees Rachel receive an engagement ring not meant for her, it sets off a series of twists that leads them to where they're ~truly meant to be~.

In my mind, it's not really Christmas until a rom-com with New York City as its main character, and Something From Tiffany's has all the classic NYC shots and tropes you could want.

I just think it is so bloody endearing, I could not WAIT to enter the acceptable Christmas movie period this year so I could watch it again.

Something From Tiffany's is streaming on Prime Video.

What would you add to the list? Let us know in a comment.

Feature image: Netflix/Stan.