On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 17% based on 47 reviews and an average rating of 4.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Arnold Schwarzenegger tries his best, but "Jingle All the Way" suffers from an uneven tone, shifting wildly from a would-be satire on materialism to an antic, slapstick yuk-fest." On Metacritic the film has a score of 34% based on reviews from 23 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.