To celebrate the season and reflect on the stories, heroes, indelible moments, and everyday joys of Thoroughbred racing, the team at America’s Best Racing offers a helpful holiday movie and TV viewing guide for horse racing aficionados. This was originally posted in December 2016 and has been updated.

• For racing fans who love a heartwarming comeback story like Lady Eli’s improbable return from laminitis several years ago, be sure to watch the uplifting classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” this holiday season.
• If Throwback Thursdays are your thing because you love the great legends of the game like Kelso, Forego and Secretariat, take a trip back to a bygone era with “A Christmas Story,” narrated by author Jean Shepard. #TBT

• If you like races with lots of horses in the field, you should watch the 2003 holiday-themed blockbuster “Love, Actually,” since it has about nine different plots interwoven into the movie.
• If you don’t feel comfortable unless you’re near a horse, check out “Elf” this season. It’s the ultimate fish-out-of-water Christmas movie!

• For racing fans who always cheer against the big star and root for Triple Crown bids to come up short, “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” is for you. You know who you are!
• If you find yourself second-guessing each bet or wondering what might have been had your horse gotten a better trip, make time to enjoy “The Family Man” this December. It’s a definitive holiday take on how our choices shape our life, with a hint of the sting of a missed opportunity.

• Do you never give out hot tips on big races just to make sure that you’ll get good odds on the horses you like? Then you need to tune in to “A Muppet Christmas Carol” and celebrate your inner Scrooge.Ÿ
• For the racing fan who can’t hold back the tears when a former claimer like Seabiscuit, Charismatic, or Lava Man perserveres and hits the big time, go directly to the Peanuts gang’s tree makeover in “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

• Feel like you’re constantly just missing hitting a Pick 6, always getting shut out before you can place a bet, or forgetting to watch a race live and then hearing about the incredible duel to the finish line? Watch “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” and find a kindred spirit in Clark Griswold.
• If nothing excites you more than a regional – and meteorological – showdown between Aqueduct and Gulfstream Park horses on the Triple Crown Trail, enjoy the incorrigible Miser brothers in “The Year Without a Santa Claus.”

• Are beautiful gray horses your absolute favorites? Then it’s time for you to watch  the Bing Crosby-Danny Kaye perennial “White Christmas!”Ÿ
• If you love racehorses who are real hams like California Chrome who love to stick their tongues out and mug for the camera, well, a slapstick comedy like “Home Alone” is the ticket.

•  Do your friends constantly look to you to save the day at the track because you always know where the best food, bars, and places to bet are in a pinch? Congratulations, you’re the John McClane of your group! Go watch “Die Hard” this Christmas.
• If you’re planning on giving your friends and family presents that consist of the free hats and giveaways that you’ve scored at the racetrack this year, your Christmas movie is definitely “Bad Santa!”
• And for fans unable able to suppress the urge to take your favorite racehorse home, go back to where TV’s greatest comedic series began: “The Simpsons, Season 1, Episode 1 – Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire.”