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Perhaps foreshadowing the eventual split, the video for evergreen slowdancer Last Christmas features stealing loaded glances at Andrew Ridgeley’s girl during an activity-filled ski holiday in a cosy alpine lodge. When he isn’t helping decorate the tree or tucking into festive duff with sparklers jammed into it, George is outside brooding in his parka, practically turning the fresh powder to slush. Released in December 1984, Last Christmas was wedged behind ’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? in the charts but remains the biggest-selling single in UK history not to hit No.1.

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Channel 4’s heartwarming animated adaptation of Raymond Briggs’s best-selling children’s book The Snowman was an instant smash when it was first broadcast in 1982. Peter Auty was the young chorister featured on the soundtrack, , but it was ’s subsequent cover version - released as a single in 1985 - that became a standalone smash. Despite his long career in broadcasting, it remains Jones’s calling card, to the extent that the affable Welshman recently released an album where he duets on his signature hit with his 14-year-old self.

Perhaps inevitably considering his name, Noel has been involved in umpteen live Christmas specials on the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳, but the ones that stick in the mind are the brace of Late, Late Breakfast Shows beamed from the Telecom Tower (which, before London Eye and The Shard, genuinely seemed to provide a special vantage point overlooking our capital). In those pre-Skype days, Noel helped viewers make video calls to their loved ones around the world before cutting to Tracey Ullman interviewing some dogs or the Krankies playing Take a Letter on a jumbo jet.

For kids growing up in the 1980s, the agonising wait until Christmas was spent poring over shiny catalogues, weighing up the most exciting prospective gift. Maybe Big Trak, the programmable all-terrain vehicle with laser-firing action? What about cheery crushed ice dispenser Mr Frosty, who promised a seemingly limitless supply of fruit-flavoured treats? Or Domino Rally, the playset that promised a Record Breakers-style falling dominos spectacular but whose thrill was over in seconds? None of these hot-ticket items ever really lived up to their advertising, but the disappointment helped to prepare a generation for the harsh reality of adult life.

was the of his day, a genuine pop pin-up despite being in his mid-30s when he first broke through with the chirpy retro rock’n’roll of This Ole House. In the video for his 1985 festive hit Merry Christmas Everyone he spends most of his time half-heartedly dodging snowballs in a wintery tableaux. After one hip shake too many, the Welsh Elvis memorably loses his footing and falls on his backside. The resulting snowy mark remains visible on his big winter coat for the rest of the running time - a happy reminder of a time before big-budget ‘story’ videos, multiple takes and blue-screen.

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This magical 1984 ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ drama deployed state-of-the-art special effects - including the ambitious animating of a phoenix - to bring John Masefield’s classic novel to life. After a fateful meeting with a shabby Punch & Judy man, posh schoolboy Kay Harker was whisked off through time and space to meet ancient heroes and vengeful animal spirits. The memorable credits sequence, featuring a chiming version of The First Noel, was similarly bewitching.

Snowballs were the Christmas cocktail of choice for suburbanites in the 1980s: sweet, frothy and extremely quaffable. Perhaps because the key ingredient was an alcoholic beverage made with egg, mothers and aunties always seemed keen to get through the entire bottle “before it goes off”, before moving on to a cute little bottle of sparkling perry.

Blanket marketing made Santa Claus: The Movie inescapable in 1985. Even if the reviews were mostly unkind, the movie was ahead of the curve by by providing Santa with a superhero-style origin story, although most of the actual plot revolves around Dudley Moore’s appropriately proportioned elf Patch (no special effects required here). The eventual message of cherishing the true meaning of Christmas is timeless, even if capitalist baddie John Lithgow - a ruthless businessman hell-bent on commercialising the holiday even further - feels like a particularly 1980s creation.

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In our current age of rigorous health and safety, it’s unlikely that Cockney hitmakers would be permitted to turn a TV studio into fully functioning pub bedecked with tinsel. But that’s exactly what happened for their uproarious 1982 Christmas Knees-Up on ITV, where the duo rattled through a series of piano-powered singalongs in front of an increasingly tipsy audience. By the time made an appearance to croon Goodnight Irene, the audience chatter threatened to drown him out.

In the stressful rush to get everything done in time for December 25, it feels like everyone should be allowed at least one festive meltdown. Joe Dante’s sly 1984 horror comedy hit tapped into the mania lurking just under the surface of Christmas. There’s something cathartic about seeing Kingston Falls - the Christmas-card suburb that could easily be mistaken for the small town from It’s a Wonderful Life - get trashed by a scaly army of malevolent beasties.

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Dozens of TV shows and movies have borrowed the structure of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, a conveyor belt of miserly Scrooges transformed by the visit of three spirits. The genius of Blackadder’s Christmas Carol, the festive one-off from 1988, was to invert the story. Ebenezer Blackadder is initially full of kindness and generosity before taking the wrong lessons from his ghostly visitations and slowly warping into the scheming, selfish, wise-cracking archetype we know and love and insulting some carol singers.

If the whole point of Christmas is to be with the ones you love, a common side effect is that there’s no one can get under your skin more quickly and effectively. and ’s combative duet - which reached No.2 in 1987 and has re-entered the Top 40 every year since 2005 - is easily the most beloved song about a couple tearing strips off each other, because nothing says Christmas like having a massive barney on December 24.