It’s the uniting of the nation, innit? That’s the theory, anyway. Food may not do it; religious choice may not do it. Weather, size of town, size of presents – or not.
Christmas is one thing – and many things. But at points, there is the promise of some special means of coming together. And TV might just make it work.
It might be the Queen’s Speech. The Morecambe and Wise Christmas special. The latest fiery soap opera cliffhanger.
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Christmas Past
It would begin with the arrival in the shops of the two highly esteemed publication: Radio Times and TV Times. (Back in the days of four channels, with only BBC1 and BBC2 appearing in the Radio Times. Plus radio, of course.)
The oohing and aahing over the treats within the pages: the TV equivalent of a chocolate box. The familiar plain chocolates of the Bond films, the Great Escape, the mysterious centres of big productions by an author no one’s really heard of before.
Out with the parental highlighter. Furrowed brows when there was a programming clash.
(Hard to remind ourselves that it took time for video recorders to be available – let alone for ones that would let you watch one channel and record another.)
I was too young to really remember the golden days of a Morecambe and Wise Christmas production. TV execs would love those viewing figures now – pretty much half the UK for a single show.
But I do remember us tuning in to the first broadcast of The Snowman in 1982. Becoming entranced by an animation with no words. Seeing a classic in its first unfolding.
There was a general (though unspoken) expectation that we would be watching The Queen’s Speech. But after that: after that was the present to unwrap when all the others under the tree were already done.
The big Christmas Day film: that was worth waiting for. And it would generally be new to TV, exciting, family friendly.
And we would watch it together.
Later, big meal and big film out of the way, there would be light nibbles of some kind.
A little of this, a little of that, on the TV front too.
What Mum and Dad watched after we had gone to bed, I don’t know. But I do remember a succession of films, animations and so on, taking you on the long march from Christmas through to the new year.
We didn’t watch them all, by any means. But you’d checked them off in the TV listings.
You were prepared. If the weather turned bad, if the get togethers didn’t quite come off:
you were ready.
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Christmas Present
These days, what to pick? The chocolate box has turned into an overpacked shopping trolley.
In some ways, it can be easier if your TV set up is the equivalent of a supermarket basket.
It’s easier to pick. You might be looking over at someone else’s family size trolley at the checkout, but you know what you’ll be having at Christmas.
The bigger the range of programmes, the harder it is to select. It’s a full table. You can get indigestion just looking in the cupboards, so to speak.
With ten days to go until the big day, I confess to not having checked what’ll be on. In the past, I wouldn’t have imagined that.
Is it world weariness, to match that of the shopping? Is it having heard that there will be more repeats this year?
Some of it comes from the curse of TV these days: too much information.
We know Dr Who will have a Christmas Day special (for some, the successor to Morecambe and Wise in its attempts to appeal to all ages) – but many of us know at least some of what to expect.
It is a present, yes – long-awaited for some. But it’s a bit like peeking in your parents’ wardrobe a few weeks in advance. The surprise is not quite the same.
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Christmas Future
Who knows what Christmas TV will be in the future. Will we bother with TV listings for Christmas at all? Will we just stream what we like?
Maybe we’ll sit in the same room, watching completely different things on handheld devices. Sharing the same space – but in different places emotionally.
Some will say we are anyway; that Christmas TV divides as much as it unites. But then so do many of the experiences of this season.
If we were all off on summer holiday on the same day of the year, would we be doing the same things? Watching the same programmes?
Christmas is an oddity in that, for the bulk of the country (allowing for those who are working on Christmas Day), we are all ‘free’ at the same time. (Tell that to the figure hunched over the cooker, still doing oven calculations.)
So if we’re free, we might just kick back and watch TV? We might equally gather round and sing carols, but that doesn’t necessarily happen at the same time in every home. There’s no shared conversation about it afterwards.
Without other obvious contenders for offering a similar experience, it may be that Christmas TV will have to do.
And if we don’t like it? At least we can unite the nation in having a good moan about it when regular daily life resumes again.