Christmas Movies Word Search: Twelve Holiday Films

Twelve Christmas films spanning eight decades: Holiday Inn (1942) and White Christmas (1954), Gremlins (1984), Scrooged (1988), Home Alone (1990), Elf and Love Actually (both 2003), The Polar Express (2004), Arthur Christmas (2011), Krampus (2015) and Klaus (2019), plus the Grinch, whose story has been filmed more than once.

Titles are written without spaces, so White Christmas becomes a single run of 14 letters and Arthur Christmas fills an entire row of the 15x15 grid.

Christmas Movies Vocabulary: 12 Words to Find

Words run across, up and down, and diagonally; 6 of the 12 read backwards. The longest word is Arthur Christmas, with 15 letters.

Arthur Christmas: Aardman's 2011 animated film about Santa's clumsy younger son, who sets out to deliver one forgotten present before Christmas morning.
Elf: One of Santa's small helpers who, in the stories, make the toys at the North Pole.
Gremlins: Joe Dante's 1984 comedy horror film, set at Christmas, about a cute pet that must never get wet or be fed after midnight.
Grinch: The grumpy green creature of Dr. Seuss's 1957 book How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
Holiday Inn: The 1942 musical with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire in which Crosby first sang Irving Berlin's "White Christmas".
Home Alone: The 1990 comedy in which eight-year-old Kevin McCallister, left behind when his family flies to Paris for Christmas, defends the house from two burglars.
Klaus: A 2019 animated film from Spain, released on Netflix, that imagines how a lazy postman and a lonely toymaker started the legend of Santa Claus.
Krampus: The horned creature of Alpine folklore who comes with Saint Nicholas in early December to frighten naughty children, and the title of a 2015 horror comedy.
Love Actually: Richard Curtis's 2003 romantic comedy, which follows several couples in London through the five weeks before Christmas.
Polar Express: The Polar Express, Chris Van Allsburg's 1985 picture book about a night train to the North Pole, made into an animated film in 2004.
Scrooged: The 1988 comedy starring Bill Murray as a selfish TV executive visited by three ghosts, a modern retelling of A Christmas Carol.
White Christmas: Irving Berlin's song, first sung by Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn in 1942, and the 1954 film named after it. Crosby's recording is often called the best-selling single of all time.

How to Solve the Christmas Movies Word Search

"Arthur Christmas", 15 letters, fills a whole row reading across, like "Krampus" and "Love Actually", the only word with a V. "White Christmas", with the only W, runs from the bottom up, and so do "Holiday Inn" and "Home Alone". "Gremlins" and "Grinch", which share their first two letters, read backwards. "Elf", "Polar Express", with the only X, and "Scrooged" run down. "Klaus" is the only diagonal.

Christmas Movie Night Ideas

Let the first person to finish choose which of the twelve films the family watches tonight.
Put the titles in order from oldest to newest before checking the years in the glossary.
Mark each film you have seen and make a list of the ones still to watch this December.