There are many traditions we’re unable to share with the rest of the world due to our home in the antipodes. While they’re humming White Christmas, we’re sweating through Hot In The City. Eggnog might be refreshing at 4 degrees, but it’s certainly off the menu at 40. And regardless of what the purveyors of inflatable decorations say, Frosty will never look at home on a patch of Aussie grass. But one ornament that barely raises an eyebrow the world over is the Christmas film. December creeps around and there it is, adorning the schedule at the local cinema.

Since the 1960s there have been no less than 216 feature Christmas films, more than four a year. It’s not a religious thing; there’s seldom a manger in sight. So what keeps secular Australia queuing year after year?

On December 13, Rise Of The Guardians  will seek to morph the historical Saint Nicholas. In this film he goes by the name North and sports Alec Baldwin’s best Russian accent. He’s accompanied by Hugh Jackman as Bunnymund (a distinctly Australian rabbit) and Isla Fisher as Tooth (a fairy who collects canines). Rounding them off is the silent Sandy, a guardian appointed by the Man In The Moon himself: “We go by many names, and take many forms. We bring wonder and hope, we bring joy and dreams. We are the Sandman and the Tooth Fairy, we are the Easter Bunny, and Santa. And our powers are greater than you ever imagine … It is our job to protect the children of the world. For as long as they believe in us, we will guard them with our lives.”

And that’s the element Rise Of The Guardians has in common with every festive film that’s ever come before: a call to believe. North may drive a super-sleigh, and Bunnymund may wield a devastating boomerang, but these stories always turn on a change of heart. Dakota Goyo (Real Steel, Thor) plays Jamie, a little boy who has given up on every one of the guardians. When the evil spirit Pitch threatens to drown the world in darkness, it’s up to these immortals to protect Earth’s children. But don’t be distracted by their attempts to recruit the wily Jack Frost (Chris Pine) to their cause. The fate of the world will inevitably turn on the faith of one small child. Sound familiar? That’s because it’s not a Christmas film if it doesn’t inspire someone to change their life.

Christmas films can be lots of things. Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer introduced us to cute; Arthur Christmas kept a long tradition of funny alive; Scrooged and Bad Santa have even made room for raunchy. But transformation is the theme most wedded to the occasion. Since the days of Charles Dickens, Scrooge in all of his 22 manifestations from Seymour Hicks to Jim Carey has taught us there’s no future in being a skinflint; only a generous heart can live happily.

Miracle On 34th Street found Santa hired by a soulless shopping centre to impersonate himself. Kris Kringle not only had the task of convincing a little girl he was real but that there was reason to hope she would have a home and a family again.

Then there’s my personal favourite, The Little Drummer Boy. Stop-motion animation can’t dilute the sadness of a child whose heart is blackened by the murder of his parents and the destruction of their final gift. But an encounter with a baby in a manger brings about an unlooked for change: “Aaron’s heart was filled with joy and love, and he knew at last that the hate he had carried there was wrong, as all hatred will ever be.”

It’s this sort of transformation that Christmas films aim for every year, because Christmas itself has conversion at its very core. You can’t have God come down to earth and the world stay the same. We’ve been left hungry for the change he began. So society may trim Jesus out of every event, but it’s unwilling to eliminate the promise he brings: “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory” (2 Corinthians 3:18a, TNIV). But without Jesus, Hollywood finds itself annually picking over an assortment of unsatisfying saviours. North may be the biggest Santa yet, and the Sandman the purveyor of the sweetest dreams, but in a world where life is all about finding rather than losing yourself, they can hardly offer the transformation we long for. So this Christmas and the next and probably the one after that we’ll line up for a ticket’s worth of inspiration. We’ll laugh, we may even cry, but unless they let the real saviour back in it will be the heroes who continue to change, not us.