Die Hard is not a Christmas movie. There. I’ve said it. And I don’t care how many well-read, supposedly celluloid-savvy individuals tell me otherwise, it just isn’t. The film’s ending, where good-LAPD cop Al, having accidentally shot dead a thirteen year old child, overcomes his fear of guns and can so resume his killing-career, does not an Xmas movie make. Ever. Sorry. And neither, with its expletive-peppered outbursts, fat-shaming diatribes and overly-saucy pantomimed acts, does Love Actually.

No, to avoid any level of doubt, confusion and subjectivity, a true Christmas movie must adhere to a very strict coda and there are three rigid scientific, logical and cinematic rules that need to be addressed:

• It can’t just be set at Christmas
• You must not be able to watch it at any other time of year
• It must leave you feeling, in a completely objective, tangible manner, er, Christmassy

Bruce Willis’s finest hour is also a movie you can, if the mood takes you, watch at any point in time during the year. Go on, treat yourself to it on your birthday, anniversary and Good Friday. But not Christmas. John Landis’s excellent Trading Places suffers the same fate. As much as I enjoy the sight of a newly downtrodden Dan Aykroyd scoffing smoked salmon outta his fake Santa beard, you can enjoyably watch the movie at any time in the coming year. And for essentially the same reason, my two current favourite contenders also don’t quite make the cut.

In the exquisitely crafted The Holdovers, a curmudgeonly, pompous and condescending teacher remains on campus during the Christmas break and forms an unlikely bond with a brainy but emotionally-damaged troublemaker, and the school’s cook, a woman who has just lost her son in the Vietnam War. Sounds a Hogmanay hoot, right? However, it’s a belter and these three very different shipwrecked characters share comic misadventures a plenty, all on a par with any seen in Home Alone, and the real journey is how they help one another understand they are not beholden to their past and can indeed choose their own futures. Awww. Treat yourself and go watch it. Now.

Vigo Mortensen and Mahershalla Ali’s Green Book is proper top-drawer. Tough bouncer, Tony Lip, a bigoted working-class Italian-American, becomes the driver for an aloof African-American classical pianist on a tour of the confederate American South. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the snobbishly erudite musician and the crudely practical hard man witness appalling injustices en-route and eventually find a newfound respect for each other’s formidable talents. The burgeoning friendship, witnessed beautifully on Christmas Day, will bring a tear to the driest of eyes and most cynical of minds. Probably. But you could watch it in Summer’s balmy heat.

For many years, I believed, wrongly as it transpires, the superb It’s Wonderful Life represented the ultimate Christmas movie. Yes, it’s obvs set at Christmas and yes it is nigh-on impossible to watch at any other time than during the week before the big-day, but does the tinkle of angel Clarence’s bell actually leave you feeling Christmassy? In reality, it’s a deeply dark edgy film where, before his eventual change of heart, a repressed and frustrated George Bailey is forlorn, terminally aggressive and ultimately suicidal. And before the diehard fans start throwing their egg-nog at me in protest, let’s not forget it was initially a complete box-office flop. Close but no chocolate cigar.

This is why the greatest Christmas movie is the dramatic adaptation of Charles Dickens’s 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol. My own personal favourite stars Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly mean-spirited miser who learns the error of his ways after visitations by three Xmas ghouls, but all versions have their own merits, especially The Muppet Christmas Carol which was the first Muppet movie released after the death of creator, Jim Henson, and was made with palpable love, care and respect by his son. (BTW, Simon Callow’s excellently camp one-man adaptation of the terrific tale is currently available on iPlayer dontchaknow). The films tick all the relevant boxes and address all the necessary criteria and, as Tiny Tim Cratchit reminds us during the finale “God bless us, every one.” I’ve watched this film every festive period for over five decades and it never fails to leave me happy and teary and full of joy, just as Christmas movies should.

On that note, my friends, Merry Christmas and God bless us, every one.