Christmas cards on the table, this is a rehash of last year’s festive film blog post, but there is a reason for it, in fact there’s two. The first is that there has now been an official poll by the British Board of Film Classification that has ruled, in my favour, confirming that Die Hard – the 1988 action movie starring Bruce Willis as an NYPD detective hoping to reconcile with his estranged wife on Christmas is NOT a Christmas movie. Told you. 44% of the celluloid-savvy respondents voted correctly, 38% still don’t see the error of their ways. Over 3% have been hitting the mulled wine way too hard and incredulously regard it the greatest movie ever, period. Mind, they probably still regard Love Actually, with its expletive-peppered outbursts, fat-shaming diatribes and overly-saucy pantomimed acts, as fabulous festive fayre. It isn’t.

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. 

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. The film ticks all the relevant boxes, addresses all the necessary criteria and never fails to leave me happy and teary and full of joy, just as Christmas movies should.

Oh, and before I forget, the second reason is The Holdovers has just been placed on Netflix, just this week, so, without further ado, treat yourself and watch it. Now. Immediately. And on that note, as Bob Cratchit’s crippled son, Tiny Tim, reminded us all, ‘Merry Christmas and God bless us, every one’.