The holidays are officially here, and along with them comes Freeform’s “25 Days of Christmas” programming block! Last year we tallied up every movie ever shown during the month of December since 2018, and the frequency of each. Now it’s time to add this year’s block to the data pool and see how things look.

Just like last year’s chart (available here), the big perennial favorites get more play this month than the others, but a couple of surprises emerged. Also, we’re only counting the films or specials that air in primetime (roughly 5pm to midnight).

Here’s this year’s schedule for reference. And now here’s what the chart looks like:

STRAY OBSERVATIONS:

• In a shocking (though not unwelcome) turn of events, the 2000 live-action adaptation of “Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas” is completely missing from this year’s schedule! Every year since 2018, it’s always racked up at least five showings. But its reign of terror is no more. Illumination’s 2018 animated version still gets two showings this year, and as it’s one that people increasingly prefer, I’m sure we’ll see it much more in years to come.

• With The Grinch out of the picture, the Home Alone and Santa Clause franchises have picked up the slack in a BIG way. Both Home Alone and Home Alone 2 garnered eight showings apiece, up from their previous peak of 6 in 2018. Meanwhile the Santa Clause movies took a big leap forward, with a grand total of seven showings each, all billed as “The Santa Clause Trilogy”.

• The jump in popularity for The Santa Clause is no doubt a marketing move from Disney, looking to advertise their new The Santa Clauses series on Disney Plus. Early reactions to the series have been rough, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the marketing blitz on this thing turns out to be fierce.

• For reasons known only to God and Bob Iger, Jingle All The Way 2 returns to the rotation this year. This is especially baffling as, to the best of my knowledge, the original has never appeared in any Freeform holiday block whatsoever.

• Making their 25 Days debut (Day-but?) are an eclectic mix of features: Frozen, Frozen II, the Frozen spin-off cartoon Olaf’s Frozen Adventure, the comically morbid rom-com Last Christmas, the Bill Murray classic Scrooged, and the film that once made our podcast literally explode: Unaccompanied Minors.

• Curiously, though, Frozen II and Olaf’s Frozen Adventure are the only two of those that are listed on the schedule as “Freeform Premieres”. The others have never appeared in any schedule I’ve seen before, but again I’m only looking at primetime data here.

Overall, not too many surprises this year. It’s still curious to me that Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas only ever seems to get played once per season, though as I’ve said before, maybe the Halloween crowd has finally staked its claim over that one.

What do you think? Any interesting data that I might have missed? What movies do you always look forward to revisiting every holiday season? Am I crazy for even obsessing over this? Maybe! Leave a comment below!