As one of the holiest times in Christendom approaches, families like ours often struggle with balancing the commercialization and secularism in popular culture with the true reason for the season. To help others, we have assembled our list of Christian Christmas movies.

Our list focuses on those movie with strong Christian values. For that reason, perennial Christmas favorites like It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), A Christmas Story (1983), or Miracle on 34th Street (1947) are not included.

A Christmas to Remember (1978) – A city-bred grandson moves to his grandparents’ farm during the Great Depression and grows up enough under their tough care to help his grandfather deliver a surprise gift on Christmas Eve to their community church with the help of a phantom stranger.

Bethlehem Year Zero (2004) – A novel approach to the Nativity presenting Jesus’ birth as television reporters and analysts might have covered it, had the medium existed in King Herod’s time. The field correspondents and studio pundits discuss the economic and political ramifications on society and speculate about the meaning of the Messiah’s appearance in their milieu.

Christmas Child: A Max Lucado Story (2004) – An updating of Max Lucado’s book “A Christmas Cross”, this film is about a successful Chicago journalist, whose marriage is at a breaking point as he is about to celebrate both his 40th birthday and Christmas; he is sent away during the Holidays to Texas for a story, and there reflects on his life and its meaning.

Christmas Miracle at Sage Creek (2005) – With a history of feuding, horse rustling and violence, the Franklin and Red Eagle families are well known rivals in the lawless western frontier. When disaster strikes, these two families will be forced to confront their many differences as lives hang in the balance. Set against the breathtaking backdrop of Wyoming’s majestic open range, Christmas Miracle at Sage Creek is an uplifting Western classic; a story of faith, filled with action and suspense that will thrill the whole family.

Christmas Mountain (1981) – A cowboy comes to a town at Christmas time. He eats at a cafe but was unable to pay for his meal, so the owner throws him in jail. The town wants to alleviate their guilt over a Mexican family, who has pregnant woman with them, who lives on top of a mountain called Christmas mountain. They bail out the cowboy and tells to bring some old clothes and food to them. While there the young boy of the family feels sorry for him and prays that god will send him some help.

From the Manger to the Cross (1912) – An account of the life of Jesus Christ, based on the books of the New Testament: After Jesus’ birth is foretold to his parents, he is born in Bethlehem, and is visited by shepherds and wise men. After a stay in Egypt to avoid King Herod, his family settles in Nazareth. After years of preparation, Jesus gathers together a group of disciples, and then begins to speak publicly and to perform miracles, inspiring hope in many of his listeners, but also arousing some dangerous opposition.

Jesus: The Movie (1979) – Jesus of Nazareth,the son of God raised by a Jewish carpenter. Based on the gospel of Luke in the New Testament,here is the life of Jesus from the miraculous virgin birth to the calling of his disciples, public miracles and ministry, ending with his death by crucifixion at the hands of the Roman empire and resurrection on the third day.

Mary of Nazareth: From Nativity to Calvary (1995) – While the importance of Mary of Nazareth in the Gospels cannot be overstated, rarely is her life on its own looked at. This docudrama, filmed on location in the Middle East with 110 actors and 8,500 extras, does just that, dramatizing her story from her betrothal to Joseph to her witnessing of the crucifixion of her only son.

Mary, Mother of Jesus (1999) – This TV movie doesn’t venture far from biblical accounts to dramatize the life of the Virgin Mary. The production proceeds chronologically, and the major events of Mary’s life, and the life of Jesus, are played out in dramatic fashion. Mary is portrayed as having to face a series of struggles and tests of faith, from the time when she is terrified to meet the messenger of God who foretells the birth of the Messiah to her witnessing the brutal scene of her son’s crucifixion.

Noelle (2007) – A struggling New England Catholic parish is on its last legs when a diocese priest arrives to take stock and prepare the pastor and his scraggly flock for the church’s closing. It’s Christmastime, and the pastor, Father Simeon is not running a tight Yuletide ship – and may be hitting the bottle a bit much. The visiting auditor, Father Jonathan, throws up his hands at the disorganization. Yet with his interaction with the parishioners, Father Jonathan is forced to confront his own feelings and judgmentalism, revisiting a mistake he made as a young man when its ghost, like Dickens’, begins to revisit him.

The Case for Christ (2007) – Based upon the Gold-Medallion award-winning best-seller, The Case for Christ documents Lee Strobel’s journey from atheism to faith through his two-year investigation of the Bible and the life of Jesus Christ. Strobel, the former legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, draws upon his investigative skills to examine the historical accuracy of the Gospels, the personal claims of Jesus and His resurrection from the dead. Is there evidence to confirm that Jesus of Nazareth was, indeed, the son of God and the savior of the world?

The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey (2007) – When a broken hearted boy loses the treasured wooden nativity set that links him to his dead father, his worried mother persuades a lonely ill-tempered woodcarver to create a replacement, and to allow her son to watch him work on it. The commission takes their relationship to unexpected places as the young client makes greater and more difficult demands of the woodcarver’s ability, and as Christmas approaches, the three struggle to come to terms with each other, their painful memories and the process of putting their unhappiness behind them.

The Christmas Shoes (2002) – Two separate stories mesh – in the first, a young music teacher, Maggie Andrews, begins dying of a heart condition and her son Nathan tries to get a pair of Christmas shoes for her before she dies. In the second, lawyer Robert Layton and his wife Kate are slowly drifting apart and the matter comes to a head during Christmas when Kate takes over for Maggie for the school choir and declines a job in Robert’s firm. When Robert’s mother passes away, he begins to reconsider things and his and Nathan’s paths cross on Christmas Eve as Nathan tries to raise the money for the shoes and Robert tries to get a present for his daughter.

The Fourth Wise Man (1985) – Artaban is a young Magus (Wise Man) who desires to follow the star to the birthplace of the coming King, against the counsel of his friends and family. Carrying three precious jewels to give to the baby Messiah, Artaban and his reluctant servant Orontes set off to join the caravan of the three other wise men. They miss the caravan, but Artaban continues the search for his King, always one step behind. Artaban spends much of his remaining wealth and all of his energy helping the poor and unfortunate people he meets, until at the end of his life he finally finds Jesus

The HOPE – The Story of God’s Promise For All People (2002) – The HOPE is a dramatic motion picture presentation of God’s redemptive story as revealed in 36 Biblical events from Creation through the Second Coming of Christ. It includes some of the most beautiful cinematic presentations of the Bible ever filmed.

The Little Drummer Boy (1968) – When Aaron’s family is killed, he hates all people and his only friends are the lamb Baabaa, the donkey Samson and the camel Joshua. But an unscrupulous travelling performer convinces them to join his troupe, and then sells Joshua to a trio of kings. Aaron follows the star to find Joshua, but then Baabaa is badly injured, and Aaron must overcome his hatred of mankind and find a gift with which to approach the babe in the manger and ask for help.

The Nativity Story (2006) – A drama that focuses on the period in Mary and Joseph’s life where they journeyed to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus.

The Star of Bethlehem (2009) – A magnificent display of the evidence to support the claims made for the Star of Bethlehem. The presentation is an inquiry without presupposition that engages even the most hostile viewer in an entertaining and easily understandable way. The data and the methods of investigation employed are transparent to anyone wanting to repeat them for themselves

Veggietales: The Star of Christmas (2002) – Bob the Tomato and Larry the Cucumber appear as Cavis Appythart and Millward Phelps, respectively – two jingle writers based loosely on Gilbert and Sullivan. The setting is 1880s London, and they’ve written a musical called “The Princess and the Plumber”, which they plan to open on Christmas Eve. Cavis thinks the production will “teach London how to love”. But children at nearby St. Bart’s Church are planning a nativity play for the same evening, and they plan to feature the Star of Christmas, a religious artifact unseen by the public for decades. The London Post Gazette writes a front-page story about the nativity play and the Star, and Cavis and Millward hatch a plan to make their musical better than the children’s play. In the end, they learn about the true meaning of Christmas.

Veggietales: The Toy That Saved Christmas (1996) – Appearing in his own TV commercials, unscrupulous toy maker, Wally P. Nezzer has convinced all of Dinkletown that “Christmas is when you get stuff!” With the town’s children begging for more toys, it’s sure to be the worst Christmas ever – until one brave little Buzz-Saw Louie doll decides to take matters into his own hands! The Toy That Saved Christmas reminds children of all ages the “Christmas isn’t about getting; it’s about giving.”

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