There are hundreds of movies involving time travel, and many others which tinker with time without being time travel movies.  There are also hundreds of holiday films, many of them revived each year.  It is not surprising that there are holiday films that involve time travel.  It is more surprising how few variations there are on these.

The most obvious of time travel holiday stories is probably Groundhog Day, which deserves its own treatment but is not about one of the holidays in the "holiday season", so it will have to be addressed another time.  Of Christmas stories, A Christmas Carol is the most famous and most duplicated.  The Internet Movie Database lists over fifty films related to that title, ranging from a 1914 version to an anticipated new release in 2010.  Notable and unusual versions are worth mentioning.  Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol captures the story fairly accurately in animated form, including much of Dickens' dialogue, without being too frightening for children.  The kid-friendly The Muppet Christmas Carol starring the reliable Michael Caine tells the story playfully, with their own humor laced into the tale. The creative Scrooged has Bill Murray as the modern television executive version of the man whose very name has become synonymous with "miser".  Rich Little's Christmas Carol debuted as an HBO special, in which the master mimic played all the roles memorably as famous celebrities in the parts.  Everyone from Bugs Bunny to Blackadder to Barbie to Big Bird to Brer Rabbit has tackled the story in one way or another, with varying degrees of quality.  The 1951 Scrooge starring Alastair Sim is widely regarded the best of the live action versions.  Now in 2009 Disney, whose 1983 Mickey Mouse version was everything that name implies, has released a new version directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Jim Carrey and a host of familiar names, which will be our subject next time, and will suffice as a consideration of the time travel effects in the essential story.

The other well-known Christmas movie involving time travel is It's a Wonderful Life, in which George Bailey (played by Jimmy Stewart) has his life erased from history, as if he had never been born.  Labeled a flop by the studio which originally released it, it has been listed as one of the top one hundred American films, and airs every Christmas.  There have been at least two remakes of this, one made for TV under the title It Happened One Christmas, the other A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie with Kermit the Frog seeing what the other Muppets would have become without him.  The Family Man with Nicholas Cage is also based on the same concept, but that it examines what would have happened had he stayed with his college girlfriend.

The sheer number of holiday films makes it impossible to determine with any certainty what else is out there.  At least two films appear to borrow the Groundhog Day concept as a Christmas story.  Christmas Every Day made for cable in 1996 (remade as Christmas Do-Over in 2006) has a teenaged boy forced to relive Christmas Day until he understands its true meaning.  In The Twelve Days of Christmas Eve, it is a businessman forced to relive Christmas Eve a dozen times to try to get it right following an accident that should have been fatal.  Other films reminisce about the past, but none appear to have the sort of reliving thereof as Peggy Sue Got Married (an obvious concept for a holiday film).  There are a few Dr. Who Christmas episodes, but none in which Christmas is more than an incidental aspect.

Thus our holiday time travel films list is short, but worth examining.