The Brief

The holiday season means holiday movies: films that can be counted upon to bring warmth and holiday cheer — and also probably some snow, a little bit of magic, and grumpy, greedy, workaholic protagonists who need to be reminded of the true meaning of Christmas.

Good holiday movies can be great, but bad holiday movies? They can be fun in their own way. Maybe they serve up tired clichés or schmaltzy sentiment. Or maybe if it's Love Actually, they just do Emma Thompson really dirty.

So we're debating: what's the worst Christmas movie of all time?

This has been adapted from an episode of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. You can listen to the full conversation here. 

Jingle All The Way (1996) 

Stephen Thompson: When you break it down, what makes a Christmas movie bad? I don't think you can come up with a better metric than purports to satirize or comment upon commercialism while being 100% steeped in it, and refusing to undermine it in any way.

The plot of Jingle All The Way can be summed up in five words: Man wants toy for science. Arnold Schwarzenegger is your star, and Sinbad is his kind-of sort-of rival. This is part of the colossally large genre of '90s family comedies about terrible fathers. It has enough material for a skit, maybe a 22-minute episode of a sitcom, but it is stretched out to 90 minutes full of digressions. None of this looks fun for anybody. Phil Hartman has a ton of scenes, none of which are funny.

On top of that, very little lesson-learning happens. The only person who winds up having any kind of perspective is the little kid played by Jake Lloyd, who would go on to play Anakin Skywalker and then leave acting.

Jingle all the Way has a sequel from 2014. Does it have any of the same actors? It does not. It has Larry the Cable Guy.

I Believe in Santa (2022) 

Aisha Harris: I have a pretty high tolerance for bad Christmas romantic comedies. That is my genre. I can enjoy them almost no matter what. The 2022 Netflix rom-com, I Believe in Santa, is an exception.

What if Elf or Miracle on 31 Street were supremely creepy? That is the premise of this movie. Lisa (Christina Moore) is a writer for a local newspaper. The only assignments she seems to get are holiday-related. Then she meets Tom (John Ducey), a lawyer, and when they hit Christmas season, she discovers that Tom is obsessed with Christmas — and he believes that Santa is real.

He likens his faith in Santa Claus to a religious belief that adults just don't get. If you've had enough eggnog, that might actually start to make sense. But the more you think about it, the more you wonder: is this movie trying to say that Tom is a persecuted minority because he believes in Santa Claus? 

Love Actually (2003) 

Wailin Wong: Love Actually is the much beloved 2003 holiday rom-com written and directed by Richard Curtis and featuring a stacked cast: Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Emma Thompson, Keira Knightley, Laura Linney, and Colin Firth are all in it. But I have resented this movie getting canonized as the ultimate holiday rom-com — or even a rom-com at all — because to me, it fails as a rom-com. There are too many storylines, and only a few of them are even a little bit romantic. Most of them are super sad, or just kind of nothing-burgers to me.

It opens with a monologue by Hugh Grant's character, playing the prime minister, in which he mentions 9/11. No, thank you. Why are we talking about 9/11 in the opening minutes of a rom-com? The script is also weirdly fatphobic, which I realize on a rewatch. It's terrible.

And the one thing that I really, really don't like about this movie — the thing that grinds my gears the most — is the storyline featuring Keira Knightley, whose character is married to Chiwetel Ejiofor's. His best friend is played by Andrew Lincoln, and he has been secretly yearning for her. He shows up at the end of their storyline with these big cue cards that say things like, "To me, you are perfect." I hate this: it's been sold to us as the ultimate grand romantic gesture, when to me, it is the height of narcissism. It's so selfish.

Scrooge and Marley (2012) 

Glen Weldon: The 2012 film Scrooge and Marley is a gay take on A Christmas Carol set in modern day Chicago. And when you hear that there's a gay version of A Christmas Carol, certain questions leap inevitably to mind. So let's knock them down: Number one, is it narrated by Judith Light? Yes, it is narrated by Judith Light. Another: Who plays Fezziwig? Is it Bruce Vilanch? Bruce Vilanch does play Fezziwig, because Bruce Vilanch is what happens when you can't meet Harvey Fierstein's quote.

Ben Scrooge (David Pevsner) owns a gay piano bar (redundant), he hates Christmas, and ghosts arrive to take him on a tour of Chicago in the past, present, and future. This film was done on the cheap, and it looks it, filmed in cramped, underlit Chicago apartments and bars. There's one gay bathhouse, Man's Country, which has since closed. In the credits, the producers thank two and only two companies for their product placement — Absolut Vodka and Grindr.

Look: I don't legitimately believe this to be the worst holiday movie of all time. It exudes exactly what you expect it to exude, which is raw sincerity and sentimentality. Those are two things I'm allergic to personally — but it's doing its job, right? I think it's entirely possible that someone who does not have a desiccated husk where a heart should could even enjoy this film. Not likely, but entirely possible.
Copyright 2025 NPR

A crew of four moon-bound astronauts will remain on the ground for at least a month after NASA delayed the launch of the Artemis II mission. During critical pre-launch testing Monday, mission managers uncovered a number of issues that prevented the completion of the test.

NASA is now planning a March launch date for the four astronauts — three from the U.S. and one from Canada — on a ten-day mission to circle the moon and return to Earth, traveling farther than any humans have ventured into deep space.

Issues leading to that delay began about an hour into Monday's test, known as the wet dress rehearsal. As the team began fueling the rocket at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, sensors picked up a hydrogen leak. Super-chilled hydrogen is used as the fuel for the massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

Hydrogen is an efficient propellant for rockets — but its molecules are so tiny and light they can escape even the tightest of seals. Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson said they had troubleshooted the initial leak, but when they began to pressurize the tank, another leak surfaced.

"And so as we began that pressurization, we did see that the leak within the cavity came up pretty quick," said Blackwell-Thompson.

(L/R) NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya, NASA Associate Administrator Lori Glaze, launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson, and manager of NASA's Space Launch System Program, John Honeycutt, hold a news conference on the Artemis II mission at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Tuesday.

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Hydrogen leaks plagued testing of NASA's Artemis I mission in 2022. Blackwell-Thompson said lessons learned from that uncrewed flight were utilized for Artemis II, but there's more investigation is needed.

The wet dress rehearsal uncovered other issues — including a problem with the Orion capsule, which will carry the crew to the moon. While no one was on board Monday, teams practiced preparing the spacecraft for its passengers. A valve that pressurizes the vehicle required additional attention and took more time to close the hatch than anticipated.

Teams also uncovered issues with cameras due to cold weather and audio dropouts across communication channels. "As always, safety remains our top priority, for our astronauts, our workforce, our systems and the public," said NASA administrator Jared Isaacman in a post on X, and that NASA will only launch when the agency is ready.

Work now begins to fix the issues. NASA will require another wet dress rehearsal before giving the "GO" to put astronauts on board. "All in all, a very successful day for us on many fronts," said Blackwell-Thompson. "Then, on many others, we got some work we've got to go do."

The earliest launch window for another attempt is March 6. NASA has additional launch opportunities on March 7, 8, 9 and 11.

The crew of NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen were released from quarantine and will remain in Houston, Texas. They'll re-enter quarantine about 14 days ahead of the next launch attempt and make the trip to the Kennedy Space Center six days before liftoff.

Artemis II is testing key systems of the Orion spacecraft, like its maneuverability and life support systems, ahead of the planned Artemis III mission that will take humans to the lunar surface. The Artemis II will mark the first time humans have returned to the moon since the final Apollo lunar mission in 1972.
Copyright 2026 NPR

A trial got underway Tuesday in a case alleging that Huntington Beach illegally dilutes the power of Latino voters with its at-large election system.

Cities across Orange County and elsewhere in California have faced similar challenges over the past decade. Most have settled out of court by adopting by-district elections, where voters only vote on a city council representative from their area, rather than requiring candidates to run citywide. A notable exception is Santa Monica — the city has been fighting a challenge to its at-large election system in court for nearly 10 years.

Now, Huntington Beach is following suit.

The case was brought by the nonprofit group Southwest Voter Registration Education Project and Victor Valladares, a Huntington Beach resident and Democratic Party activist. It’s being heard by Orange County Superior Court Judge Craig L. Griffin.

The argument against at-large city elections

The plaintiffs allege Latino voters can’t elect a candidate of their choice under the current system, in violation of the California Voting Rights Act. This alleged dilution of Latino voting power, they say, leads to poor representation and negative consequences for the city’s majority-Latino Oak View neighborhood.

“Their needs get ignored,” Kevin Shenkman, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, said during his opening statement Tuesday. “It is a natural result of the at-large election system.”

Latinos make up about 20% of the population in Huntington Beach. Under a draft map of electoral districts drawn up by demographer David Ely, a witness for the plaintiffs, the district that includes the Oak View neighborhood would be 40% Latino. Plaintiffs argued this would give residents more power to elect a city councilmember who represents their interests.

The city’s defense of at-large elections

In their opening argument, lawyers representing Huntington Beach argued that Latinos in Huntington Beach are spread across the city and politically diverse.

The city’s lawyers also argued that recent elections of Latino city council members, including MMA star Tito Ortiz in 2020 and Gracey Van Der Mark in 2022, prove the city’s current at-large election system doesn’t impede Latino residents’ ability to participate in the local political process.

“The system works, it’s not broken, and the evidence will show that at trial,” said Anthony Taylor, one of the attorneys representing Huntington Beach.

The trial is expected to last into next week.

Go deeper

• Why were AI-equipped police cameras installed in this majority Latino Huntington Beach neighborhood?
• Huntington Beach's controversial voter ID law is illegal
• Voting by district gives Latino candidates a boost in Orange County
• District elections mean big governing changes for many California cities

In a week when temperatures are 20 degrees above average in parts of Southern California, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the county’s first heat action plan.

The plan lays out strategies to achieve three goals in coming decades: cooler outdoor spaces, cooler indoor spaces and better public education about the dangers of heat.

The blueprint, approved Tuesday, comes as L.A. County and the world are experiencing longer, hotter and deadlier heat waves as a result of pollution trapped in the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s one of the only such plans in the region dedicated to extreme heat.

Why it matters

Already, heat is responsible for the deaths of more than 200 people each year in L.A. County, as well as thousands of emergency room visits. Since the 1980s, summer temperatures, particularly in the valleys and inland areas, have risen on average 3 degrees, with expected increases as high as 8 degrees on average in certain areas, such as the Antelope Valley, according to the plan.

A graph from the new L.A. County Heat Action Plan.

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Unless global pollution is dramatically reduced, by 2050, average temperatures in L.A. County are expected to rise nearly 4 degrees. The valleys and inland regions will see the highest heat: The San Gabriel Valley could see the number of extreme heat days above 95 degrees go from 32 a year to 74. But coastal areas won’t be spared: Long Beach could see extreme heat days quadruple, from just four days on average above 95 degrees to 16, according to local projections.

Nights are getting hotter even faster, disrupting sleep and impacting health in ways we don’t yet understand — 41% of L.A. County residents who responded to a survey for the heat action plan reported trouble sleeping on very hot nights.

“We needed to develop an all-of-government framework for dealing with rising temperatures,” said Ali Frazzini, policy director with the county’s sustainability office.

Nights are heating up faster than days as a result of climate change, affecting our sleep and health in ways we don't yet fully understand.

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An invisible threat

The plan includes goals for strategies such as replacing blacktop at schools, installing shade structures, and enforcing renter protections for safe indoor temperatures.

“There wasn't the same level of centralization and systems for responding to and adapting to heat as we see with some of our other hazards,” Frazzini said.

Unlike earthquakes or wildfires, heat is something of an invisible threat, she said — it’s ubiquitous, though experienced in unequal ways, and it doesn’t cause extensive property damage. It’s not confined to certain regions.

Despite being the leading weather-related cause of death in the U.S. and here in Southern California, heat is not officially recognized as a disaster at a state or federal level, which limits funding support for public health interventions. The county hopes the plan will unify its efforts across departments and draw more state and federal funding to protect public health.

Strategies to live in a hotter LA 

The plan builds on four years of work since 2021, when the county released its first climate vulnerability assessment.

“That assessment told us where our problems were and what they were, and this plan now tells us how to address them,” said Rita Kampalath, the county’s chief sustainability officer.

Most of the strategies highlighted in the plan are in progress, though many have faced serious delays. For example, one goal includes adding shade structures to all L.A. County bus stops by 2045 — county leaders have attempted to do this for decades, and progress has been extremely slow. Other goals include greening schools and planting trees in neighborhoods with the least shade. Efforts to green schools have faced stops and starts due to funding challenges and lack of planning, though there is progress. And planting trees where they’re most needed has proved to be a lot more difficult than it may seem.

Despite the challenges of implementing the ideas, V. Kelly Turner, a heat researcher at UCLA who served on an advisory group for the plan, said "one thing the L.A. County heat action plan gets fundamentally right is that it centers people and the everyday ways that heat becomes a disruptor to daily life."

Another unique aspect of the plan, she said, is that it used shade data, not only temperature data, to inform its strategies.

"Few cities around the world are using shade maps to systematically inform heat resilience planning," she said. "So, in that respect, the county's heat action plan is truly a leader."

Below are some selected facts and figures from the plan.

Goals for 2045:

• Install functional shade structures at 100% of L.A. County bus stops. 
• Achieve 20% tree canopy in unincorporated areas. 
• Replace 1,600 acres of pavement at schools and public spaces.
• Enforce new rules that require landlords to keep units below 82 degrees.
• Reduce energy burden for low-income households to 4% of monthly budget.
• Create 30% more county cooling centers for 234 regionwide by 2045, as well as support solar and battery installation at trusted indoor community spaces.