my official christmas movie good-bad matrix, plus some of our fave holiday decor

so into that #49

Hi! It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

November was a flurry of work travel and fun travel for both me and George, but aside from a quick trip to Denver for my LAST BOOK TOUR EVENT(!!) on Monday, we are home for the holidays! My family is coming for Christmas and we are all so excited to be hosting the North Carolinians for a California Christmas.

Yesterday I decked my halls (with fresh wreaths and garlands from Trader Joe’s!) and shot this year’s easy-but-fancy holiday menu, which will be hitting your inbox this Saturday. You all went crazy for last year’s and many of you asked to have this year’s earlier in the month for all of your entertaining needs. So ask and you shall receive!

If you follow me on IG, you know that I’m DEEP in good-bad Christmas movie binging this week. If you don’t follow me on IG — or if you do but don’t know what the heck I’m talking about — allow me to explain.

I love the classic good Christmas movies so, so much. But I live for *good-bad* Christmas movies — AKA those Netflix, Hallmark, and Lifetime movies that are so bad they’re actually good. And discovering them is half the fun: you’ve gotta kiss a lot of Hallmark frogs to find the good-bad princes.

There are only 21 days until Christmas, AKA 21 days of Christmas movie watching ahead of us, so we must choose wisely!

Personally, I stick to good-bad movies from about mid-November until December 10th, with the occasional good-good movie thrown in there (I watched The Holiday weeks ago!), and then I make a hard pivot to purely good-good Christmas movies at night, with the occasional good-bad Christmas movie thrown in during the day if I somehow find myself able to watch a daytime movie, which, let’s face it, I haven’t since Mattis was born in 2019. Make sense? Great.

I had to whittle down my list from YEARS of research to compile this approval matrix à la NY mag, but here we go — without further ado…

GOOD-GOOD CHRISTMAS MOVIES

My absolute faves, in no particular order

• The Family Man: George’s and my #1 fave. We save it for a really special Christmassy night. This one was recommended years ago by our Jewish friends who celebrate Christmas, tree and all, because, “why would we not?” — love you Ari and Corey.

• The Family Stone: Hysterical, but also a sob fest — do not recommend if you have recently lost a parent.

• The Santa Clause: A classic — we know every line! The Santa Clause II is pretty great, too.

• Love Actually: But honestly, it kind of pisses me off. So many bizarre plot lines? Professor Snape’s unresolved affair? The ridiculous insults thrown at the Prime Minister’s gorgeous assistant…? The fact that we are to believe that two 8-year-olds enter a long-distance relationship based on one airport chase? I digress.

• Home Alone I & II: A must! But we are not a Home Alone III house.

• A Christmas Story: It plays all day long on some cable channel on Christmas Day and growing up we kept it on, on mute, all afternoon in the background of our festivities, and my dad would run over and unmute it at all of his favorite parts.

• The Holiday: Jude Law at his absolute foxiest!!!!!!!! Kate Winslet finding her gumption!!!!

• Miracle on 34th Street: The 1994 edition for me! The sweetest.

• Happiest Season: We don’t watch it every year, but since it came out in 2020 I think we’ve watched it two more times?! It is funny and vulnerable and great.

• Let It Snow: High school Christmas nostalgia!!!! With a moment for The Waterboys! I adore this sweet “anything can happen at Christmas” movie.

• 8-Bit Christmas: This is a newer one that can’t be missed.

• National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation: A classic, you can’t not watch this one every December.

• White Christmas + It’s A Wonderful Life: I’ll be honest, I’m not a classic/black and white movies gal, but I turn one of these on every year as background music while I’m decorating, and Molly pitched hard for both.

• Elf: It’s not Christmas without a visit from Buddy!

• How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000): This one is contentious among our team but I *love* it.

• Serendipity: A classic, fantastic romcom that is often forgotten as a Christmas movie!

• Noelle: Anna Kendrick in a Christmas movie! What’s not to love?

• Little Women: Both versions, but I love the remake — all the cozy sisterhood charitable Christmas feelings!!!

• While You Were Sleeping: An A+ romcom starring Sandra Bullock that happens to be set during Christmas.

GOOD-BAD CHRISTMAS MOVIES

Christmas movies that are so bad they’re good! These are my kryptonite, I watch them every year (or will from now on)

• The Christmas Chronicles: We enjoyed both I and II! Feel good family movies.

• Christmas in the Spotlight: The Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce Christmas fanfic that none of us asked for!!! It was extremely silly, with bad but not awful acting, making it absolutely perfect.

• The Princess Switch I & II: Classic good-bad! The third installment of this series is skippable.

• A Christmas Prince I, II, & III: Every single romcom trope possible packed into a tidy Christmas package — LOVE.

• The Knight Before Christmas: It’s like a low-budget Christmas edition of Outlander — thank you, yes.

• Holiday In The Wild: Charlotte from SATC gets divorced and goes on a safari where she meets Rob Lowe — YEP, YEP, YEP!

• Meet Me Next Christmas: A new one this year! A classic “oh my gosh, it was you the whole time!” Christmas romance.

• Christmas In Notting Hill: This is basically a Notting Hill made-for-TV Christmas knockoff and I LOVED IT.

• LoveHard: It ticked me off how mean she was to him!!!! But OK, it was silly and cute and it turned out cute enough to earn a spot here.

• Christmas Survival: This is a funny, grumpy British humor Christmas good-bad.

• Our Little Secret: Lindsay Lohan’s latest Christmas conquest. It had all of the silly little “oh no this might ruin Christmas!” side quests and the plot line was totally silly but it was an utter good-bad delight!!

• The Noel Diary: This plot line was absolutely ridiculous but the acting was actually pretty good, earning it a firm spot on the good-bad list.

• Office Christmas Party: This movie is absolutely moronic, but in a funny way, not an “I need to stop watching this” way.

• The Christmas Contract: A holiday-themed “let’s pretend to be dating then fall in love!” situation.

• Just Friends: A Christmas-set romcom with Ryan Reynolds and Anna Faris. It’s not good — it’s good-bad!

BAD-GOOD CHRISTMAS MOVIES

These are good-bad Christmas movies that veered just a biiiiit too far into bad territory to deserve a rewatch, but still hold merit in the good-bad universe. Like, I think you should watch all of these, honestly. But I need you to know that they are very bad. Bad-good.

BAD-BAD

I really don’t wanna bash any movies — one man’s trash is another man’s treasure! — so I won’t get into all the specifics, but for one reason or another, these movies are a no for me. Please come forth and defend them in the comments section!! PS, I need to admit that I originally (on Instagram) slotted Hot Frosty and The Merry Gentlemen into the bad-good category but upon further reflection, they were absolutely horrible and I regret wasting valuable Christmas movie time on them. There, I said it.

OK, OK, where do we disagree?! Molly and I fought over so many of these, and then I sent it to my cousin chat and we got into many heated arguments over where movies belonged on the matrix. I can’t wait to see what you guys get mad at me over!! And what movies did I miss?!

I love ornaments. Giving them, getting them, buying them for myself. I feel so special when someone buys an ornament that’s very me, and I’m obsessed with finding the perfect ornament for my friends and cousins, using them to mark milestones for my kids and godsons (not a single goddaughter but I’m staying hopeful), and also just stockpiling pretty shiny ones. I think an inexpensive ornament makes such a nice garnish to a present — like a cookbook (might I suggest this one?) with a butter ornament threaded onto the bow. Or if it’s a fancy ornament, it makes a thoughtful gift all on its own!

In case you too love ornaments and could use some new baubles for your tree or for gifting…

• Caro’s fave: Does anyone else also hide a pickle ornament in their tree?! Jillian and Molly had no idea what I was talking about when I was telling them about the pickle, but I thought it was something everyone (or at least a lot of people!?) did. Growing up, my parents would hide the pickle ornament somewhere on the tree on Christmas Eve, and as soon as we got home from the Christmas Eve church service, my brother, sister, and I would race to the tree to hunt for the pickle. Whoever finds the pickle gets to open the first gift on Christmas Eve! My kids haven't been old enough to grasp the pickle concept yet, and I'm so excited to introduce them to it this year.

• Molly’s faves: I love Old World Christmas ornaments — they’re a splurge but are hand blown and hand painted and come in almost any shape you can think of, from Doritos to backpacks to parrotfish. I buy one every year to commemorate something special, like when we got our dog and when the kids held their first lemonade stand. I write the year on the bottom so we’ll remember decades from now! They’re definitely not shatterproof/kid-friendly though, so are a gift from me to me (until one day when the boys can use them to decorate their own trees). I also collect ornaments when I travel and absolutely love that a memento from my friend Cynthia’s Vegas bachelorette party sits next to my late grandma’s dainty mercury glass ornaments and my son’s popsicle stick snowflake.

• Jillian’s faves: I'm all about the keepsake homemade ornaments! One of my favorites is a sweet quilted fabric ornament handmade by my 6th grade teacher Mrs. Williams. I truly can't believe she took the time to make so many of these for all of her students. Teachers are true angels! For anyone crafty, I found this guide on how to make them! I also treasure the handprint baby ornaments we made of both our boys’ hands. It made the perfect gift for the grandparents too. And of course any ornament that comes home from school is a keeper for me.

• We all need the $5 butter ornament on our trees!

• And this $5 marg too.

• A bauble for the golfer in your life.

• I love wrapping up picture frame ornaments with candids of the kids from the past year for them to unwrap on Christmas morning, and am eyeing these $10 frames from Pottery Barn. Framebridge also makes photo ornaments (and they print the photo and put it in there for ya…).

• This porcelain ball with a Santa sleigh scene is very classic, very cute.

• How sweet is needlepoint Santa?

• These mercury glass ornaments look like they’re decades old (in a good way).

• Here’s an epic set of nutcracker-themed Old World Christmas ornaments. Would be a great gift for a young adult just starting their collection!

• A little baby bronze frying pan for the chef in your life.

• A paddle for a pickle-baller! Wait, I need to get this one for Jillian.

• A shiny lobster that reminds me of Calum (if you’ve followed me on IG for a while you’ll get it lol).

• This Diana Keaton ornament because, duh.

• How easy is that?!

My friend/manager Adam shared some of his favorite Judaica objects. He got his *coolest* menorah (see below!) from here, but also loves his traditional family heirlooms. These latke guys and this sufganiyot (a cross between a beignet and a jelly donut, sufganiyot are pillowy donuts that are eaten in Israel and around the world during Hanukkah) live on his mantle during the month of December. And these Hanukkah cards are so great!

His menorahs stay displayed on shelves around the house year-round, but move to a more prominent location and get candles during Hanukkah. This cool dreidel sculpture comes out just around Hanukkah.

His grandmother made him that needlepoint menorah on the right when he moved to LA ten years ago!

PSA, don’t forget to stock up on good-quality wrapping paper. Trying to wrap presents with tissue-thin paper you grabbed at whatever store’s open at 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve sparks zero joy. Been there, done that, won’t let it happen again. I like to make a night out of it by locking myself alone in a room with a TV, watching a good GOOD Christmas movie (prob The Family Stone), and sipping a lil Pennsylvania Dutch while I wrap. Here are fun options!

1. This paper wrapping kit is so smart — you get coordinating paper rolls, ribbon, and gift tags all in one order. I ordered it and it’s gorgeous and I used the red ribbon to tie bows on all of the sconces around my house! It’s in my Flagship shop — if you buy $75 of stuff from my Flagship (which basically allows me to aggregate products from small businesses that I love), shipping is free even if you’re ordering from tons of different shops. It’s a really cool new platform that I’m using in an attempt to support small over Amazon! I even have a whole “great wrapping paper” section.

2. If you don’t need a whole kit, Rifle Paper Co. has some lovely paper options.

3. Alternatively… grab some pretty bags to chuck the gifts in and call it a day.

4. Here’s some gorgeous paper for Hanukkah gifting!

5. I also love wrapping gifts in brown kraft paper ($14 for 100 feet!) paired with a beautiful ribbon. If your kids want to get involved, you can ask them to color on kraft paper-wrapped gifts for the grandparents! Or if you’re crafty, I think this holiday block-printing set from Blockshop is so, so special.

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so it’s time to send one of you something good! This month, rather than a product haul, I’m sending the winner a kitchen gadget I use all the time, especially during the holidays when it feels like I'm constantly chopping/making pie dough/grating cheese: a Cuisinart 9-cup food processor! To enter to win¹, tell us about your favorite ornament or Judaica object — or gimme a hot take on a Christmas movie that did or did not make the list.

PS: Rozlyn Poray was the winner of last week’s giveaway — congrats, Rozlyn!

What to Cook launched in mid December 2020, which means there are nearly 200 recipes in the archives (it also means we’re coming up on WTC’s 4 YEAR BDAY!). To help you cook through the archives, let’s revisit what we cooked this week last year, and the year before that, and the year before that.

parmesan pot pie, 2023

Did you make this with your turkey leftovers?! If not, get yourself a rotisserie chicken and make this cozy meal asap.

pork marbella, 2022

My modern take on the it meal of the 80s! We use pork instead of chicken, add a veggie to the mix, and made it saucier. IT IS SO GOOD. And such a fancy feeling holiday meal! But still so easy!

3-ingredient chorizo street tacos, 2021

If you’ve never cooked these tacos before, make them tomorrow night! It’s a 10-minute meal that requires just three main ingredients.

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1. You must be at least 18 years old, a paid subscriber to What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking, and live in the U.S to enter to win.