It’s Christmas. Well, it’s May when I am writing this, but it’s Christmas when you are reading it. It feels odd to talk about the festive season so soon, but it seems to be the event that many of us build up to, whether it is the Christian ceremony that concludes Advent which we countdown to, or Hanukkah or Kwanza or Yule. We gather together and seem to forget the meaning as we gorge on indulgent foods and hand each other extravagant gifts. For me, the food and the presents and spending time with family are what make the season, but the films and television shows at the centre are just as important.
Each family builds traditions of their own and integrates them into annual celebrations. Our clan used to gather on Boxing Day, but COVID put paid to the fun and games we would share as a clan on the day after Christmas, and the light familial squabbles that would frequently ensue. Otherwise, our household has a cheese based feast on Christmas Eve, in which we watch The Muppet Christmas Carol, a film that must be impossible not to love; a long walk around the local streets in the bitter cold to judge each of their Christmas light displays out of five using our scathing scoreboard, an approach Mother and I adopt for our annual ‘Mince Pie Chart’, which Sainsbury’s often win; a trip to a lovely garden centre display followed by a pizza at Pizza Express with those luscious snowball dough balls they serve; and a different themed game of Monopoly every year in our pre-Eastenders board game session on Christmas evening. Our house has collected many versions of Monopoly: Doctor Who, Friends, The Office, even Eastenders. Board games have become unnecessarily complicated and sometimes the simple ones, whether they be monopoly or movie quizzes or something like Uno, are the most effective.
Christmas traditions are something that the BBC aspires to create with its television patterns but the repetition is merely tedious. Every year has Top of the Pops, then Julia Donaldson’s annual cartoon, followed by the King’s Speech, preceding the annual film which has little spark compared to the days of old, where the movie premiere actually would be just that, a novelty. The night also provides Mrs Browns Boys, Strictly Come Dancing, Call the Midwife, and that same episode of Vicar of Dibley where she eats all the sprouts, and you can rely on the Beeb for that, while Channel Four always shows the Home Alone sequel, the one with Donald Trump in New York, and ITV puts on Love Actually in the dead of night.
The first week of December would always involve the start of my marathon of the Doctor Who Christmas specials. This was the case from 2011, after I first discovered the science fiction programme, until 2021, and every time I would watch ‘The Christmas Invasion’. Personal issues meant that I did not partake in this merriment for 2022, though I did watch my new favourite special, ‘A Christmas Carol’, and I hope that Ncuti Gatwa’s debut in the upcoming festival special will be one we can stick on year on year and nourish its enduring rewatchability.
Before November, it should be illegal to play Christmas songs on the radio. Zoe Ball played ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’ on Radio 2’s Breakfast Show in January! Blasphemy, that makes the post-Crimbo lull and January blues all the more despairing. November is the time where the Christmas adverts begin, launching alongside I’m A Celebrity, the comfort viewing of the period, and when the awful Christmas films released by Netflix are allowed to reach our screens. The classics must be reserved until November, and the songs get played in our home as we decorate the living room, using our homemade CD in our collection since 2008. Thank the Lord we do not use our Vinyl Christmas compilation, old enough to feature Gary Glitter’s ‘Rock and Roll Christmas’! ‘You never know what you might get from me’. I dread to think.
The specials which have a place every year in our house are Father Ted (‘A Christmassy Ted’ is one of the best episodes of the greatest British comedy, with non stop laughter, particularly the Lingerie shop sequence), Miranda (True comfort, so-bad-it’s good, old fashioned sitcom telly), Gavin and Stacey (The first special is a beautiful fixture, and the inferior but renowned sequel has become a new partiality to add to the Christmas Day itinerary), and Bottom (The physical comedy between Rick and Ade is centre first in this source of constant hilarity). Fresh favourites have become Motherland, Vicar of Dibley and The Fast Show.
In terms of movies, it would be blasphemy to not watch It’s a Wonderful Life and The Muppet Christmas Carol at least once every year. The latter is one of the most charming films ever made. The former is a contender for one of the greatest films of all time, full stop. I got bored of Home Alone because I watched it every Christmas Eve for about ten years, but it feels right to add it back to the list, after a few years away. Elf is a must watch which softens the heart, and Nativity is an underrated gem. Christmas films are one of the most important assets to annual traditions, and the time where media feels most fitting to the general public. We in our own way can do a better job than the broadcasters making the schedules that constitute the Radio Times issue which must be brought but becomes increasingly hard to justify with its price!
Following a tumultuous 2023, I resolved that our family would try to have the best Christmas we possibly could. Last year was bogged down by a lot of issues, but this year is the chance to celebrate the festive season with the regards that the festival is designed for: To appreciate our loved ones and the times we spend with them, and it is almost the only time where you get to watch films and discuss TV shows with your peers, something that unites us in the darkest and coldest months of the year. May your Christmasses be merry and bright.
Writers' Room Reviews 