The best Christmas films of the 21st century

Christmas lends itself very nicely to movie watching. Everyone has time to burn and the entire family is far too full of mince pies and lukewarm leftover turkey to actually muster the energy required to leave the sofa.

With that in mind, Christmas films are an indispensable part of the cinema landscape. These are movies people often watch every single year and fall in love with over the course of time. The 21st century has yielded its fair share of festive classics, which already feel as essential to the Christmas experience as trees, presents and the year's most depressing episode of EastEnders.

Read more: Michael Sheen and Nathalie Emmanuel reveal favourite Christmas films

But which is the best Christmas film of the 21st century? It's time to crunch the numbers. From a longlist of the major festive releases since 2000, we ranked them three times — based on global box office (with a slight statistical fudge for streaming movies), Rotten Tomatoes critic score and the same site's audience score — and awarded points for the rankings.

The result is a (theoretically) definitive list of the best the 21st century has to offer when it comes to Christmas viewing. So settle down with that advent calendar you promised yourself you wouldn't entirely consume before December even starts, and dive in.