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Holiday Classics at The Lindsay
December 19, 2025 – December 25, 2025
Happy holidays from your friends at The Lindsay!
We’re ringing in the season with our annual Holiday Classics, featuring a delightful mix of nostalgic favorites starting on Friday, Dec. 19, and continuing through Christmas Day.
Enjoy multiple chances to watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation and Elf. It’s a Wonderful Life, starring Indiana, Pa., native James Stewart, also remains a Lindsay holiday staple.
The Lindsay’s 2025 Holiday Classics lineup will mark 25 years of the live-action How the Grinch Stole Christmas and 80 years of Golden Age rom com Christmas in Connecticut. Pittsburgh Classic Movie Club president Wendy Whittick will introduce the Friday, Dec. 19, Christmas in Connecticut screening.
Visit our website for all Holiday Classics showtimes and tickets. This year, The Lindsay is also collecting nonperishables for Center for Hope, an Ambridge food pantry that has been meeting growing demands. The food drive started last week, in advance of Thanksgiving, and will run through New Year’s Eve.
Warm up your sleigh, put on something cozy and head over to The Lindsay for a heaping helping of holiday cheer!
It’s a Wonderful Life
PG | 2h 10min | Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Director: Frank Capra
Stars: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore
Who doesn’t sometimes feel like George Bailey (James Stewart) in It’s a Wonderful Life? It’s Christmas Eve, and George is contemplating whether his life has amounted to anything. That’s when an angel appears to show George exactly what the world would look like without him.
“It’s one of those ageless movies, like Casablanca, that improves with age … (and) can be viewed an indefinite number of times,” late critic Roger Ebert declared. “Stewart touches the thespic peak of his career,” and director Frank Capra injects “his sure-footed feeling for true dramatic impact,” raves Variety.
Adds BBC: “It’s a Wonderful Life achieves a fine balancing act between pathos and feel-good that is delivered by an outstanding cast. Even the minor parts are populated by some of the finest character actors, and it produces a movie of timeless quality and relevance.”
Elf
PG | 1h 37min | Comedy
Director: Jon Favreau
Stars: Will Ferrell, James Caan, Zooey Deschanel
Elf stars Will Ferrell as Buddy, a human raised by elves in the North Pole. A fully grown Buddy travels to New York City on a quest to meet his biological father (James Caan). Buddy’s infectious optimism inspires everyone he meets to embrace the holiday spirit.
Director Jon Favreau proved he “has the magic touch” with this “genuinely sweet” 21st-century Christmas classic, praises the Los Angeles Times. “Will Ferrell is hilarious in this delightful elf-out-of-water holiday confection,” declares The Hollywood Reporter.
“Elf is at the very least a breezily entertaining, perfectly cast family treat. Actor-director Jon Favreau, working from a colorful script by David Berenbaum, has delivered just the right combination of naughty and nice.”
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
PG-13 | 1h 37min | Comedy
Director: Jeremiah S. Chechick
Stars: Chevy Chase, Bevery D’Angelo, Juliette Lewis
Anyone familiar with the Vacation franchise would’ve expected a Griswold family holiday celebration to play out exactly like it does in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. This time, Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) doesn’t even have to leave town for things to go horribly wrong.
The third Vacation film is “the most madcap Christmas comedy ever,” proclaims Time Out. Christmas Vacation is “side-splitting funny” and contains “moments of great physical comedy by Chase,” applauds IGN.
“This movie has always been a favorite when it comes to the nuttiness of Christmas and family, and it’s still a riot.”
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (25th anniversary)
PG | 1h 44min | Comedy, Family
Director: Ron Howard
Stars: Jim Carrey, Taylor Momsen, Kelley
It has somehow been 25 years since we all learned How the Grinch Stole Christmas—in live action! This adaptation of the classic Dr. Seuss story stars Jim Carrey as the green grump who enlists his dog, Max (Kelley), to ruin Whoville’s holiday festivities.
“This is Jim Carrey’s show, and he just about wraps the movie around his spindly green finger,” commends Entertainment Weekly. “With The Grinch, Carrey may well have realized the most entertaining, and in the end, almost moving live-action children’s characters put on screen,” lauds Empire.
“In the end, this is Jim Carrey’s movie. His performance is quite simply a masterpiece of controlled sentiment, perching brilliantly on the cusp of pathos and dangerous anger. … It’s a bravura performance loaded with energy, wit and delighted malice.”
Christmas in Connecticut (80th anniversary)
NR | 1h 41min | Comedy, Romance
Director: Peter Godfrey
Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, Sydney Greenstreet
Christmas in Connecticut is a lovely holiday comedy starring Barbara Stanwyck as Elizabeth Lane, a food writer who has been lying about having an idyllic life. Hijinks ensue and sparks fly when Elizabeth’s boss and a returning war hero invite themselves to her fictitious farm for Christmas.
Director Peter Godfrey’s 1945 rom com is full of “subversive screwball complications,” praises The Guardian. It’s a “thoroughly wacky” film that has become “a bit of a hidden gem in the Christmas canon,” writes The A.V. Club.
“Coming off Stanwyck’s villainous, Oscar-nominated turn in Double Indemnity, Christmas in Connecticut presented one of the lightest, gentlest roles in her career. … There’s so much about Christmas in Connecticut that feels newly relevant to our current era.”
Note: Wendy Whittick, the Pittsburgh Classic Movie Club’s president, will introduce the 7 p.m. Christmas in Connecticut screening on Friday, Dec. 19.
