This year, the TV run-up to Christmas Day seems to be filled with more spurious festive specials than ever. Take your pick from The Only Way Is Essexmas (well-jel bells?) to Deal Or No Deal: The Panto (Noel "Noël" Edmonds as the Genie), or Christmas Coach Trip (doing motorway arguments for you).
Balancing that merry lot comes This Is England '88, the next instalment of Shane Meadows's continuing excavation of his Sheffield childhood that Channel 4 first explored last year with This is England '86.
Showing over the next three nights, it's a drama so unafraid to go to the dark side that it includes a scene where Lol watches the 1988 Christmas EastEnders special for light relief.
Without getting into spoiler territory with any of the major plot points here, it's fair to say that the group's dynamic has changed in the past 18 months. The tone is still 80s bleak, delivering on the "broken nativity" concept right from the opening Smiths-soundtracked montage filled with images of Thatcher, strikes and Lockerbie.
That Dickensian-style juggling of a big cast is one of the things that makes the drama so Christmassy, without getting into the festive cheese on offer elsewhere; seeing the gang getting ready for the holidays, dealing with their individual heartbreaks and tough home lives.
But it's not without lighter moments: the dawn of pub karaoke, Woody's one-step-too-far attempts at office banter with his boss Mr Squires ("You can fuck off … Twat!") and Shaun's excrutiating introduction to olives from the posh dad of one of his new drama-course friends (played by Alex MacQueen aka Julius from The Thick Of It). "Are these like funny grapes?" "No, no, no. These are olives. See that? It's a stone. It's a dangerous beast."
• This is England '88, 10pm, Channel 4, Dec 13, 14 and 15
My all-time Christmas Cracker: A Charlie Brown Christmas
Charles Schulz's seasonal Peanuts instalment sees eternal cartoon pessimist Charlie Brown questioning the point of the holidays. The perfect blend of winter melancholy, end-of-year hope and ice-skating beagles, with Vince Guaraldi's trio shuffling through jazz versions of Christmas carols gets me every time.
