Leon Brown, of The Weather Company, said: ‘The Christmas period looks like seeing milder, moist air coming to the UK and hitting the cold air.
‘This would bring snow, especially in the South and even to low levels. The North is more likely to have a continuation of the cold air and wintry showers.’
A Met Office forecaster said: ‘From December 24, conditions may be widely changeable, with some spells of rain, and at times snow.’
The classic Christmas card scene of thick blankets of snow was last seen in Britain on December 25 in 2010.
Since 1960, only four times has there been widespread snow, defined as hitting 40 per cent of monitoring stations, on Christmas Day – also in 1981, 1995 and 2009.
There have been ‘official’ white Christmases since then but that simply means some snow fell somewhere.
They are defined by the Met Office as one snowflake spotted falling any time on December 25.