From as far back as Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which struggled to find its footing in the end-of-the-year glut of late December 1946, predicting the canon of Christmas movie future has never been easy. Some of today’s favorites had to survive a critical drubbing, or a ho-hum box office. Others needed a push from cable TV. And still others just didn’t seem like holiday movies, becoming classics almost accidentally thanks to reclassification or cult followings.

The holidays have given us an occasion to dig through the archives to see if New York Times critics were on the right side of history when they first reviewed these films, or if they missed an annual tradition in the making. Here’s a sample of 10 that are currently available to stream — some established favorites, others quirky upstarts — along with excerpts from what our critics first thought of them and links to their full reviews.

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‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ (1946)

Stream it on Amazon.