There are but a handful of really good Christmas films, ones that make you laugh and cry in equal measure. There is a formula to the Christmas film that follows a warm but ultimately predictable path:

Busy Workaholic Dad: BWD will seemingly care more about his job than his family, and this will cause him to miss the school play, forget to buy presents, and come across as an all-round grumpy git. The simple truth is that he loves his children and his wife, and justifies his marriage to his job by saying that he is providing the nice house and lifestyle that they have. Maybe it'll be an old man with magic powers, or an old lady, or a death (Christmas films can be surprisingly dark in tone), but something will happen to snap them out of it and become a loving and caring dad and husband. This coincides with being fired from, or walking out of his job, and realising that there are more important things in life, for added effect this will happen on Christmas Eve. Examples of this include Elf, The Man In The Santa Claus Suit, Jack Frost, and Miracle On 34th Street (although in the last example, it's a woman).

Love: People who long to meet 'the one' will set up the storyline that they have always been unlucky in love. We may see them in flashback with their ex-partners, or we may see them exchanging longing glances across a busy workplace. They meet and fall in love on Christmas Eve. Examples include Love Actually, and Nativity.

Lack of Christmas Spirit: LoCS people hate the most wonderful time of the year. If the boss is a LoCS, then they will have their staff working on Christmas Eve, and maybe even Christmas Day. In the final act of the film, they suddenly learn that Christmas is brilliant, and apologetically awards a Christmas bonus to the poor, put upon staff and hosts a party. Again, this will usually happen on Christmas Eve, possibly after being shown the error of his/her ways by way of a night of visits from ghosts. All LoCS stories owe a debt of gratitude to Charles Dickens.

A combination of all of these scenarios can be seen in the film Nativity. Released in 2009, it combines LoCS, Love, and throws in the 'we'll do the show right here' mentality of the best musicals. The film has you crying from about half an hour from the end. Also, wouldn't we all have loved to have had a classroom assistant like Mr Poppy when we were at primary school?

Watching Nativity brought home to me the period of life when Christmas was the most exciting, it was when I was the age of the kids in this film. I don't think the concept of infant school, junior school, and senior school exists anymore. In my experience, there are just two schools, the one you start going to as a child, followed by the one you go to from the age of eleven. The school portrayed in Nativity was an infant school as I remember it, and when we were introduced to it in the film, it was the run up to Christmas. The excitement of the build up to the season has never been topped since those days. Nativity took me right back to making decorations to take home, the cardboard post box for cards, and of course the lead up to the school play. I briefly touched on all these things in my recent blog about A Christmas Gift To You From Phil Spector.

The Christmas school fete happened after school, usually on a Friday and was in reality nothing more than a jumble sale with added festivity. The Christmas edition of Crackerjack was aired on the Friday before Christmas, (usually the day we broke up from school for the holidays). The school play allowed us that freakishly delightful opportunity to be in the school building in the evening.

I seem to remember being in a nativity play when I was very young, probably a one-line gift bearing wise man with a tea towel on my head. My recollection of it is sketchy. When I was a child, I had very little ambition with regards the stage, (I actually remember wanting to be on the radio at a very early age, and used to make my own shows with the help of two tape recorders), but looking back I am a bit put out about my lack of board treading when a schoolboy. It was my part as a waiter in A Medieval Christmas, (see the picture in the linked blog), that was my biggest role in a school production. Again, I have very little recollection of this, apart from the two of us holding a big tray with a pig's head on it, and reciting quite a sizable bit of dialogue. Even looking at the cast list, I struggle to remember the plot. I'm guessing that the teachers decided that there were too many people to cast a nativity. Another year, I was in the band and credited on the typewriter created programme as 'percussion'. Not even the fucking drummer! My big moment was when I was in the hand bell team, six of us with bells and not a single one of us could read music. The music was written out in numbers, I can still remember the tune to a piece of music called 'Music Box', it works on a recorder too if you cover the right amount of holes:

3 1 4, 4 4 5 5 5 1, 3 1 4, 4 4 5 5 5, 1 1 2 2 1 2 2 4 4, 1 1 2 2 1 2 2 4, 3 1 4, 4 4 5 5 5 1, 3 1 4, 4 4 5 5 5

Funny the things you remember!