Don’t you love Christmas? It’s the one time that we get to gorge ourselves on sugary snacks of negligible nutritional value, the only time when a plate of salted nuts, cold bread sauce and chocolate money counts as a balanced meal. But this tendency for sickly overindulgence is not just limited to the food we consume – our yuletide viewing habits can be equally unhealthy.

When it comes to Christmas movies, even the most austere arthouse purist would agree that a different set of rules applies. Wallowing in overwrought sentiment, swamping the story with songs as sickly as buttered rum — all these things are not just permitted, they are practically essential for a successful Christmas movie. Take Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).

It’s an unashamed tearjerker that received lukewarm reviews on its release and was, initially at least, something of a box-office disappointment. But it’s a near perfect example of a Christmas film — generous, community-minded family man George Bailey (a terrific James Stewart) is practically the human embodiment of the spirit of Christmas. So, in the week that one of the all-time seasonal classics, White Christmas, is re-released, we compile the recipe for a great Christmas movie.

Take one curmudgeon

The grizzled old cynic immune to festive fun is an essential role: through his eyes and his eventual conversion by the season of goodwill the audience allows itself to be persuaded that Christmas is all about magic and neighbourly values, rather than rapacious consumerism. The archetypal curmudgeon is Alastair Sim’s deliciously mean-spirited Scrooge in the 1951 Dickens adaptation of the same name. With its expressionistic and atmospheric lighting and luminous black and white photography, Brian Desmond Hurst’s Scrooge is one of the most

visually striking of all the Christmas movies. But it’s Sim’s performance that is the real heart of the film. See also Bill Murray in Scrooged, from 1988.

Add at least one great song

An essential ingredient that binds the perfect Christmas film together. It’s so crucial that entire films have been constructed around the song. The classic ballad White Christmas was first crooned by Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn (1942). Twelve years later, Holiday Inn was loosely remade as a film that retained Crosby but elevated the song to a starring role. Also starring Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney, this story of a pair of ex-soldiers who put on an impromptu show to save their former general’s hotel business was an instant classic, thanks in no small part to its terrific soundtrack.

Another example is Vincente Minelli’s Meet Me in St Louis (1944), starring Judy Garland. It’s not technically a Christmas film but because the score features the saddest, loveliest Christmas song ever recorded, Garland’s rendition of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, it has become part of the festive season.

Stir in a large helping of innocence

The trick to getting the most out of seasonal cinema is to try to watch it through the eyes of a child. But approaching the story with innocence doesn’t mean that you miss out on its wit. Elf (2003), starring an exuberant Will Ferrell as Buddy, a man raised by elves at the North Pole, is a perfect example. The jokes in Elf are gentle and affectionate; his character irrepressibly enthusiastic, a wide-eyed innocent who believes that chewing gum on the pavement is left there as a present. Single-handedly, he brings festive cheer to the busy, slightly hostile streets of New York.

Sieve in lots of family values

For what is Christmas without family? Not a lot of fun, as Macaulay Culkin discovered in Home Alone (1990). He played a rebellious eight-year-old who wished that his family would disappear, only to find himself stranded in a big, empty house that has been targeted by a pair of comically useless criminals. His seasonal revelation comes when he realises that all he really wants for Christmas is his family back home again.

In the 1994 remake of Miracle on 34th Street the somewhat conservative message we take away is that the family is incomplete without the full complement of parents, a nice house and pair of kids. Thus hardworking single mum Elizabeth Perkins finds herself married off and possibly knocked up by the end of the film.

Sprinkle with snow

Considering how rarely we actually get snow at Christmas, it’s remarkable how closely the white stuff has become associated with the holiday season. Snow doesn’t just carpet the average Christmas movie, it arrives at the perfect moment: it accompanies White Christmas’s musical climax, while its spot-on timing is the real miracle on 34th Street.

Add a generous helping of magic

We’re not just taking about the magic that brings three spooks to the bedchamber of Ebenezer Scrooge or the spontaneous life swap that turns Nicolas Cage’s high-flying city boy into a husband and dad in the lamentable Family Man (2000). No, the real magic is the twinkle in the eye of Edmund Gwenn, in the original and best version of The Miracle on 34th Street (1947), that persuades the audience that this old man might just be Santa Claus. It is there too in the real-life magic that took place on Christmas Eve, 1914, when enemy soldiers played football and shared drinks between the trenches, a spirit captured by the French war film Joyeux Noël (2005).

Drizzle a soupçon of romance

It’s a vital ingredient certainly, but be warned that romance during the festive season is fraught with complications. A misunderstanding and some crossed lines in White Christmas led to Rosemary Clooney fleeing from Vermont and the attentions of Bing Crosby to a new job in New York. And all the complicated romantic manoeuvring in Love Actually (2003) leaves the viewer with a worse hangover than a vat of mulled wine would cause.

Combine with darkness to taste

I prefer my Christmas movies to have a slightly darker sensibility to counteract all the sweetness. For children, you can’t do better than Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), a wonderful stop-motion animation about what happens when the denizens of Hallowe’en Town hijack Christmas. And there’s the unexpectedly spooky The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) or the anarchy of Gremlins (1984). Christmas-phobic adults will relish Bad Santa (2003), the crude, expletive-laden tale of an alcoholic department store Father Christmas (Billy Bob Thornton).

The Christmas detox

You’ve finally had enough of all the syrupy gloop and want some cinema of more nutritional value? Try the documentary Wal-Mart: The High Cost Of Low Price (2005) for an antidote to the consumer frenzy; the Mongolian drama The Story of the Weeping Camel (2003) for a glimpse of a place far away from new year’s sales and Polanski’s Chinatown (1974) to reintroduce yourself to a world where not everyone is on the nice list.

Now showing: Christmas must-sees

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
A child-friendly culture-clash comedy about city beasts from New York zoo that find themselves ill-equipped to deal with the big wild world.

Australia
Baz Luhrmann’s epic doffs its cap to Casablanca and The African Queen. Out Dec 26.

Changeling
Angelina Jolie in a wrenching tale of a mother whose search for her missing child lands her in a mental hospital.

Waltz with Bashir
A dazzling animated memoir that explores director Ari Folman’s memories — or lack of them — of his experiences as a soldier in the first Israel-Lebanon war in the Eighties.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson
Fascinating documentary assessing the career of the legendary writer. Out Dec 19.

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