The four stop-motion Christmas films to start with are The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Robin Robin (2021), Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas (2021) and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964). The Nightmare Before Christmas is the only full-length film of the four and is rated PG. Robin Robin and the Shaun the Sheep special are both Aardman half-hours. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is the 1964 American television special, the oldest here by nearly thirty years.
All four were made the same slow way. Physical models are posed, photographed, nudged a fraction and photographed again, over and over, and the frames played together make them move.
| Film | Year | Length | UK age guidance | Made by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer | 1964 | TV special | Check the edition | Rankin/Bass, directed by Larry Roemer |
| The Nightmare Before Christmas | 1993 | 77 min | PG | Directed by Henry Selick, produced by Tim Burton |
| Robin Robin | 2021 | 31 min | U | Aardman for Netflix, directed by Dan Ojari and Mikey Please |
| Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas | 2021 | 31 min | See content advice | Aardman, directed by Steve Cox |
The three numerical running times use the BBFC's listed versions, rounded to the nearest minute. Other releases can differ. For Rudolph, check the certificate and running time of the edition you plan to watch.
What counts as stop-motion?
Stop-motion is a technique, not a genre, and not every handmade-looking film uses it. Clay is only one material. The 1964 special's figures were puppets, and Smithsonian magazine calls the special groundbreaking for its stop-motion animation with puppets.
Live puppetry is a different thing again: a puppeteer performs in real time in front of the camera, with no frame-by-frame work at all.
The Snowman · Film guide →Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: the 1964 original
Rankin/Bass made this special for American television in 1964, and Smithsonian magazine says it has been shown every year since, making it the longest-running Christmas special there is. The animation was handed to Tadahito Mochinaga, the Japanese filmmaker who pioneered puppet stop-motion in China and Japan.
Choose it for a short trip into television history rather than a modern family film. The pace, the songs and the slightly stiff figures are the point.
Search with the year. The BBFC lists several other productions with Rudolph in the title, including a 1998 feature and a 2001 title, and none of them is this one. Check that the listing is for this 1964 special, including its running time and age guidance.
The Nightmare Before Christmas: the full-length one
The Nightmare Before Christmas · Film guide →The BFI calls it the film that gave stop-motion a Hollywood upgrade: a 1993 fantasy musical, paid for by Disney, directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton, who had first dreamed it up years before as a young animator.
The story runs backwards from the usual Christmas film. The ruler of a Halloween world stumbles on Christmas, decides he would like to run it, and gets it spectacularly wrong. It is the pick when you want the design to carry the evening, and it suits a household that has not quite finished with October.
It is rated PG. The BBFC's advice is mild scary scenes, and the look of the thing is part of that, so do not assume a film made of models is automatically the gentle option.
Robin Robin: a half-hour musical
Robin Robin · Film guide →Aardman made this 30-minute short for Netflix, and it was the studio's first stop-motion musical. A young robin is raised by a family of mice and spends the film working out where she belongs. Bronte Carmichael, Richard E. Grant, Gillian Anderson and Adeel Akhtar are in the voice cast.
Choose it for a quieter slot when there is time to look properly. Its needle-felted figures give it a softer texture than Aardman's familiar clay characters, and the little movements reward attention.
It is rated U, with the BBFC noting some threat.
Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas: the comedy
Aardman's festive half-hour for the flock went out in December 2021 and won the International Emmy Kids Award for animation the following year.
This is the one for a room that wants to laugh. The Shaun the Sheep series has always run on slapstick, and slapstick lives in movement and timing, which is exactly what stop-motion is good at.
The BBFC's content advice notes rude humour.
Watching for the handwork
If you want to notice the craft, pick one figure and watch it when it is not the centre of the scene. A tilt of the head or a half-second pause was a decision somebody made, one frame at a time.
For a first choice: The Nightmare Before Christmas for a full evening, Robin Robin for a short musical, the Shaun the Sheep special for laughs. Save Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for the night someone asks what Christmas television looked like before they were born.
