Santa’s almost here! It’s about this time that I like to sit back, chill out and watch some classic movies. There’s a lot of debate about what makes a Christmas movie a Christmas movie, but for me it’s easy:

• Is it set at Christmas?
• Are there Christmas-themed songs on the soundtrack?
• Does the Christmas setting feature heavily?

If the answer to those three questions is yes, that pretty much settles it for me. Which, for me, is why Die Hard is a Christmas movie.

I mean, just look at that image. It doesn’t get more Christmassy than ‘Now I have a machine gun – Ho-Ho-Ho’, does it?

In any case, every year my Christmas films basically boil down to whatever I fancy, along with the aforementioned Die Hard and the other essential movie for me: Home Alone. It took me a very long time to warm to Home Alone (mostly because I was a pretentious teenage film snob when it first came out), but now I find it utterly irresistible and Christmas doesn’t feel like Christmas without it.

So anyway, there we are. Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals.