Where to stream A Christmas Carol this Christmas
Don’t wait for a ghost to visit you because you forgot what’s important in life. Here’s where you can stream A Christmas Carol before it’s too late to get back in touch with your gratitude.
Charles Dickens wrote his famous novella featuring the last-minute, Christmas Eve redemption of the gruff, miserly, one-foot-not-far-from-the-grave Ebenezer Scrooge in 1843. Dickens’s cautionary tale became immediately popular, and has been adapted by multitudes for the stage and the screen ever since.
When it comes to Christmas movies, we all tend to favor those that we watched when we were little and filled with a sense of wonder and magical possibility. We return to these films again and again throughout our lives, either to recapture that sense of magic in ourselves or to pass it along to our children. Or both.
Where can you go to stream your favorite version of A Christmas Carol? Don’t bother with Netflix this year. They’ve got plenty of Christmas movies, just not any of the adaptations for this one. Hulu’s free options are limited (unless Barbie is your thing. It’s not mine). They’ve got the 2008 animated Barbie in A Christmas Carol. The remaining choices all require subscriptions to add-on services.
More from Amazon Prime Video
- Arranged marriage, spies, and more! Everything we know about Mr. and Mrs. Smith on Prime Video
- Our favorite vigilantes return in 2024!: The Boys season 4 release updates and more
- Who does Sterling K. Brown play in Invincible season 2?
- Gen V season 2 release updates and everything else we know
- Gen V ending explained: How did it set up season 2 and The Boys season 4?
Amazon Prime Video has the most streaming selections, mostly rentals. But the selection is wide, from 1938 to the present, and more than a handful are available for free streaming for Prime members. They’ve got Muppets, Smurfs, The Flintstones, Jim Carrey, Bill Murray, and much more.
FX is releasing a brand new, dark adaptation on December 19. Here’s the trailer:
Next. What to watch on Netflix this weekend, Dec. 13: 6 Underground and more. dark
My favorite version remains the 1962 animated musical television special, Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol, voiced by Jim Backus. As a kid, I laughed at the comic relief provided by the song “We’re Despicable” sung by a quartet of thieves after plundering goods from a recently dead man’s bed.
The humor is balanced by the foreboding skeletal finger pointing at Scrooge’s grave when he’s visited by the ghost of Christmas Future, or the sweetly sad ballad delivered by Tiny Tim, “I’m All Alone in the World.” You can rent it on Amazon Prime Video for $1.99 (Standard Definition) or $2.99 (High Definition).
Post your favorite Christmas movie in the comments!