Winter, often perceived as the bleakest season with its barren landscape, year-end melancholy, and unresolved struggles, has also been eulogized for its introspective beauty. Austrian poet Rilke, writing to a woman devastated by her husband’s desertion, described winter as a time to nurture one’s inner garden—tending to the mind and spirit after a period of endurance. Albert Camus echoed this sentiment: “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” Similarly, films like The Holiday depict this growth, framing heartbreak and recovery against the cozy charm of swapped holiday lodgings, emphasizing renewal and comfort over sorrow.
Here are ten films like “The Holiday” that somewhat capture the same spirit:
10. Serendipity (2001)
That winter, and by extension, Christmas, is supposed to be interspersed with miracles is retold through “Serendipity.” One element in particular echoes throughout the film: the appeal of fate and destiny. Unlike most movies on the list, the romance that is at the centre relies more on the couple’s chance meetings and miraculous coincidences than growing together despite being at odds. Starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale, the couple, Jonathan and Sara, meet at Christmas, feel the spark, but let each other go purposefully, and remain faithful to fate which they believe would one day bring them together again.
9. A Tale of Winter (1992)
In his ‘On Eric Rohmer’s A Tale of Winter,’ Stanley Cavell notes, “In ‘A Tale of Winter,’ Rohmer discovers vision or interest in, let’s say, a specialized or stylized sense of the world as passing by, namely in crowds of strangers passing, in their individual mortal paths, and oneself as a passer-by among others, each working out a stage of human fate.” Félicie, who had shared a brief relationship with a young man named Charles, is a hopeful lover. She lets Charles go and remains hopeful that they will reconcile again. Throughout the years, men come and go, but Félicie remains unmoved by the longing for Charles. Finally, Félicie finds Charles on a bus. The reassertion of faith and destiny and the reward an individual gains through their unshakeable belief in both make it readily acceptable for this list.
8. Holiday Affair (1949)
In this film, Robert Mitchum, revered yet repulsive as the living nightmare Harry Powell from “The Night of the Hunter,” is endowed with a Christmas love story with a single mother. Quite interestingly, in this film, Mitchum is a reservoir of clear water– there is no mud causing hindrance in the way of deeper probing. He handles children well, and children fascinate him so much. Even in the end, when his love interest reveals that she is going to marry someone else, he is vulnerable enough to show his disappointment but lets her go, and yet remains hopeful. On top of it, Steve Mason, the character played by Mitchum, loses his job for her but never bats an eyelid. (If that is not a green flag!)
7. Happiest Season (2020)
Happiest Season is a heartwarming holiday rom-com that beautifully celebrates the spirit of love, family, and self-acceptance. Abby (Kristen Stewart) plans to propose to her girlfriend Harper (Mackenzie Davis) at her family’s Christmas dinner, but there’s a twist—Harper hasn’t come out to her family yet! What follows is a mix of hilarity, heartfelt moments, and the inevitable chaos of the holiday season. Directed by Clea DuVall, the film is inspired by her own life, adding an authentic touch to this groundbreaking LGBTQ+ story.
Much like The Holiday, it’s a movie about relationships, self-discovery, and finding where you truly belong during the most magical time of the year. Both films remind us that the holidays aren’t just about decorations and gifts—they’re about love, connection, and being unapologetically yourself. With a stellar cast, including Dan Levy and Aubrey Plaza, Happiest Season is a cozy, feel-good watch that’ll make you laugh, cry, and believe in holiday magic!
6. While You Were Sleeping (1995)
The film ‘While You Were Sleeping’ is a fitting choice for the contours of a Christmas romance film: it has a woman falling in love with a stranger, the woman rescuing her love from a near-death experience, but most importantly, the woman’s misunderstood identity as the man’s fiancée. The woman, named Lucy (played by Sandra Bullock), falls in love with a stranger despite never coming close to even speaking terms. However, she gives love a second chance when she falls in love with the stranger’s brother.
5. The Apartment (1960)
“The mirror, its broken”
“Yes, I know. I like it that way. Makes me look the way I feel”.
In “The Apartment,” sleazy men and casual sexism abound. The ones who are not monsters are losing against circumstances: loaning out their apartments to the higher-ups to score well careerwise. The women have their hearts broken by getting into relationships where a dead-end is inevitable but deliberately whitewashed. However, it is a Christmas love story as both these categories of broken individuals, C.C. Baxter and Fran Kubelik, get together and share their brokenness and trust to form a meaningful whole from the parts. There is also a line from Kubelik that says, “Some people take, some people get took. And they know they’re getting took and there’s nothing they can do about it.” This is essentially a story of two people who are taken great advantage of and left out in the unforgiving weather when the time comes, quite literally.
4. Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
The far too many instances of Christmas films pinned on mistaken or concealed identities perhaps cannot just be a work of comic relief. One way to see them can be to acknowledge the undertone of the inherent goodness of the human spirit lying beneath all that innocuous deceit and confused states. The central character Elizabeth Lane who is very much single, has for days concocted false narratives of being married with a baby and owning a Connecticut farm.
So when she is almost on the verge of a showdown with her publisher and one of her devout readers, she manages to get hold of a farm and even almost gets married falsely. However, in the end, despite these grave anomalies, Elizabeth is forgiven and given a true romance of her own. Stories like this continue to be popularly associated with Christmas due to their lightheartedness and themes of human fallacies and forgiveness.
3. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
The mythical air surrounding Christmas and the blissfulness of the human heart are nowhere more trenchantly examined than in Frank Capra’s ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ The film is more than simply a Christmas romance. Along with carrying religious and secular messages, I believe it is also a film that explores in great detail how draconian institutions like banks and concepts like ‘loans’ can be and how they can contribute to the languid state of humankind. The disconcertion surrounding the topic makes it a widely faced yet less painfully nanoscopic-addressed subject. Yet, the triumph of the will following a tragedy such as that of George remains one of the greatest testaments of the undying human spirit.
2. The Shop Around The Corner (1940)
Nothing makes for a greater romance than one where the endurance of each other’s pitfalls is laid out in the beginning. In this Lubitsch film, the central characters play and outplay each other, drive each other up the wall, and go through a process of deflating and inflating egos– all this while being in the process of falling for each other, however, with concealed identities. The comforting element is perhaps the absence of the need for perfection. Much like “Pride and Prejudice,” which is a reference point for the next film on the list, and rightly so, Alfred Kralik and Klara Novak, co-workers at Matuschek and Company, bicker and have great disdain for each other, even going to the extent of name-calling. However, with time both realise that scratching the surface and digging into the inner truth might result in the most sustained achievement.
1. You’ve Got Mail (1998)
To me, You’ve Got Mail is irrevocably the tutelary spirit of the Christmas romances. In other words, it is the chicken soup for the soul beaten by both the unforgiving weather and the cynical world. The romance at the heart of it is comforting. It is comforting as it reiterates the adage that the best of relationships and friendships can start off with the hugest of fights. It is also comforting as the relationship reminds me of this Adrienne Rich quote:
“An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.”
Although the concealment of the identities of both parties is the element that drives the story, there is never a deceit in terms of understanding what compounds the other person: their virtues and their vices. What also makes it visually comforting is the cozy settings and mise-en-scene– from the Brooklyn brownstone apartment of Kathleen Kelly to her quaint bookstore ‘The Shop Around the Corner’ peppered with adorable knick-knacks and goodies.
