Review

Christmas culture

Culture

Film & TV

24 December 2024

6 min read

The twelve days of Christmas TV

What to watch across the festive season.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

At a Christmas party, friend smile, laugh, and collapse in a heap on a sofa.

This is occurin'.

Christmas approaches! We are soon to begin the twelve-day marathon of celebrating the birth of Christ through food, drink, and…collapsing in front of the telly! It is a season of great joy and gladness, but also one of physical and mental exhaustion. To make it all a little easier I have finely combed through the Christmas edition of the Radio Times to present to you the one can’t miss televisual offering for each of the twelve days. Consider this my gift to all the readers of Seen & Unseen; hopefully a little more practical than a partridge in a pear tree.

On the first day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Gavin & Stacey: The Finale

Christmas Day, BBC 1, 9pm

The first G&S Christmas Special is an annual tradition in my household. My wife and I are guaranteed to watch it at least once in the run-up to Christmas. It is an example of a truly perfect piece of television: masterfully combining the necessarily contrived and mawkish sentimentality of Christmas telly, and the absurdist/realist/deadpan comedy that endeared the series to so many. The comeback Christmas Special in 2019 was a let-down on the night (I had such high expectations) but has grown on me over the years: nowhere near as good as the original, too self-referential and mannered for its own good, but still darn-funny, and acting as a rather sweet meditation on aging and parenthood. Christmas Day is all about family – be it our own family, or the Holy Family of Bethlehem – so why not see the day out in the warm glow of the Shipman-West family.

On the second day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Zulu

Boxing Day, Channel 4, 3.50pm

This one is personal for me. This is one of the first films I remember watching with my father, around the Christmas season. Glorious cinematography, a pacey plot, an electrifying final set-piece (which, 60 years later, is still more engaging than most of the bigger budget CGI shlock you can see today), a smattering of Welsh patriotism, and Michael Caine doing a posh accent. This is a classic for a reason: the remarkable story of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift combined with a searing and sympathetic exploration of the British class system, ending with a meditation on both the unifying and horrifying nature of war. If you’re suffering from over-indulgence on Boxing Day I can’t think of a better tonic.

On the third day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Pitch Perfect

27 December, ITV 2, 9pm

The sequels very much delivered diminishing returns, but the original is such a wholesome piece of film-making. A celebration of music, growing-up, sisterhood and girl-power…it is feel-good fare from beginning to end. Anna Kendrick shines with raw singing-star-power, while Rebel Wilson provides just the right amount of comic relief. After the high of Christmas Day, and the slow come-down of Boxing Day, this film is like a warm bath of feel-good aca-enjoyment.

On the fourth day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Maggie Smith at the BBC

28 December, BBC 2, 7pm

A celebration of the career of Maggie Smith on what would have been her 90th birthday. If that precis doesn’t hook you, then we can’t be friends.

On the fifth day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

The Fugitive

29 December, Channel 5, 4.35pm

I can’t think of many thrillers better than this. From the very first scene this film has you on the edge of your seat asking the most terrifying of existential questions…

WHY DOES HARRISON FORD HAVE A BEARD!?!?!?

The tension only ratchets up from there! Harrison Ford plays the character he was born to play: a slightly gruff man, down on his luck, full of ingenuity, trying to prove that he didn’t murder his wife. Tommy Lee-Jones is similarly expertly cast as the long-suffering law-man who doesn’t follow procedure…no, he feels the case in his bones! The film rips along as such a rollicking pace that you’ll feel like it’s just started by the time it has finished.

On the sixth day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Rocketman

30 December, Channel 4, 9pm

The music of Elton John is indestructible.

On the seventh day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Jools’ Annual Hootenanny

New Year’s Eve, BBC 2, 11.30pm

By now this is has become a cross between a National Treasure and a National Institution, and I cannot comprehend people who see the New Year in with anything else on their telly.

On the eighth day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Airplane!

New Year’s Day, ITV 4, 9pm

This is the funniest film ever made. That is an indisputable fact, whether your metric is quantity or quality. The jokes come at a machine-gun rattle, and every single one hits their target! Absurdism, slapstick, wordplay, and the straight-face of Leslie Nielsen…THE FUNNIEST FILM EVER MADE!

On the ninth day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World

2 January, BBC 2, 10pm

Russel Crowe deserved to have this film be the start of a worldwide phenomenal franchise; especially as Patrick O'Brian left us with twenty novels to work from. Crowe embodies Captain Jack Aubrey perfectly – oaken and noble and solid. Teaming him up with Paul Bettany for the second time is a masterstroke, as they bicker and play-off each other like old friends. There is action, emotion, intrigue, drama, and naval tactics. What isn’t to like?

On the tenth day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

The Silence of the Lambs

3 January, ITV 1, 10.45pm

Anthony Hopkins serves us up plenty of leftover Christmas ham with his performance. His Hannibal Lecter is intelligent, sophisticated…and essentially and pantomime villain. His Hannibal is hammy with a capital H! Please don’t misunderstand me, I enjoy the performance and the film, but it isn’t a patch on Brian Cox’s bone-chillingly subtle, understated performance in Manhunter. Anyway, this is a terrifying film in the best way possible. Putting Hopkins aside, the performances are all spot on: Jodie Foster gives us an ingénue who’s vulnerability is both a weakness and her greatest strength, and Ted Levine is indescribably creepy as serial-killer Buffalo Bill. After ten days of Christmas lulling you into a soporific stupor, this flick is the icy wake-up you need!

On the eleventh day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

The Graduate/Rain Man

4 January, BBC 4, 9pm/11.20pm

Early-career Dustin Hoffman or mid-career Dustin Hoffman: take your pick. The is no wrong answer.

On the twelfth day of Christmas my telly gave to me…

Aliens

5 January, ITV 4, 9pm

The rarest of creatures: a sequel which surpasses the original. Sigourney Weaver is iconic, and is the prototype for all future female action heroes. James Cameron takes Ridley Scott’s original claustrophobic horror masterpiece, and morphs it into a war-movie to rival ‘Saving Private Ryan’. It is a superb adrenaline-rush of a film. At the end of twelve days we can all echo Bill Paxton’s immortal words: Game over, man! Game over!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

BONUS GIFT…

Carols from King’s

Christmas Eve, BBC 2, 6pm

One of the finest examples of Anglican liturgy, perfectly combining atmosphere, music, and scripture. I’ve written a little article explaining why the service of Nine Lessons and Carols is a treasure we must not lose.

Read now

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Review

Books

Culture

Podcasts

Re-enchanting

4 November 2025

5 min read

The book, the ritual, and the reader

Season 7 of Re-Enchanting explores how books shape our habits and our search for meaning

Tom Rippon

Tom Rippon is Assistant Editor at Roots for Churches, an ecumenical charity.

A reader sits on a sofa with a raised leg and holds a book

Jonathan Sanchez on Unsplash.

When was the last time a book elicited spontaneous reverence from you? It’s something of a cliché to say that books take you on a journey, but sometimes a book comes along which simply demands to be read with ceremony.

This is the experience of the writer Donna Freitas, just one of the guests welcomed onto season 7 of the Re-enchanting podcast. In her conversation with Belle Tindell and Justin Brierley, she describes how her morning routine of coffee and a book has practically attained the status of a ritual for her. Freitas describes the deliberate preparations she made for the final chapter of Alice Winn’s In Memoriam, a historical novel exploring the relationship between two young soldiers in the trenches of the First World War as their idealised understanding of war shatters and their suppressed feelings for one another play out against a shifting backdrop of class, national identity and belonging. Freitas’ ceremonial approach to finishing her book - you’ll have to listen to the episode to hear more about this - may sound somewhat unusual at first for the respect and honour that it implies is due to a book, but this notion of textual reverence finds a distant echo in the Christian faith, where the Word, living and written, is central.

Freitas’ particular experience of faith is recounted in her book, Wishful Thinking: How I Lost My Faith and Why I Want to Find It, but listening to her description of her reading experience posed its own questions for me. At what point does habit become ritual? And how do we distinguish between them? Even as people develop individual, secular rituals to give rhythm to their lives, this does not always translate into an openness towards religious ritual. Does this mean that ritual today is understood as an individual, rather than shared, activity? Despite some evidence suggesting a revival of sorts in the Christian faith, most of the growing churches in the UK tend place more emphasis on spontaneity than ritual, but perhaps our continued desire for ritual and familiarity should give mainstream churches a reason to pause in their current approaches to church planting?

Either way, for many of us, a home-grown ritual of an enticing cup of coffee paired with the smooth, dry pages of a book first thing in the morning may simply sound like an inviting, yet sadly unattainable, prospect. Sometimes just getting everyone and everything out the door on time constitutes an epic in itself. However, since there’s no harm in fantasizing, let’s peruse the Re-enchanting back-catalogue for more reading recommendations.

Looking back over season 7 of Re-enchanting, I’m struck by how popular biography remains amongst our guests’ reading choices. Nadim Ednan-Laperouse recommends Heidi Barr’s autobiographical account of the near-death experience which led to her conversion from Orthodox Judaism, What I Saw in Heaven. Lamorna Ash, whose work explores the softening of Gen Z’s attitude towards Christianity, appropriately lends balance to her Re-enchanting moment with her recommendation of John Stuart Mill’s autobiography, which recounts his journey away from faith. The faith landscape in the UK is certainly shifting at the present time and perhaps the only way to truly understand these shifts is to read both sides of the story. We need to read about journeys away from faith as much as journeys to faith in order to understand the society in which we work and witness. A data scientist might call these eliminating biases, a literary critic might call it awareness of an unreliable narrator.

Telling the story of someone’s life is at the centre of Bear Grylls’ most recent work, The Greatest Story Ever Told, in which he retells the life of Jesus through the eyes of those around him. The emergence of the faith is told from the perspective of those coming to faith, a hint perhaps that faith has to be remade, reborn, resurrected even, afresh for each person. Read Bear Grylls’ own take on his book, written for Seen & Unseen earlier this year.

Grylls’ own work seems to have an almost essay-like quality through its short, accessible chapters and essay collections seem popular amongst our other guests as well. Lamorna Ash also recommends Pulphead by the journalist John Jeremiah Sullivan, a collection of essays spanning topics from eco-anxiety and the blues to the Tea Party and Christian rock, each giving a brief insight into the concerns and ponderings of a thousand other minds. It strikes me that such collections are the literary equivalents of hitting shuffle play, the perfect fit for those reading rituals that have to be scattered in-between other moments of activity. If you’re searching for some faith-based content for these moments, then I recommend Richard Carter’s Letters from Nazareth, a collection of meditations from the contemplative tradition written for those ‘catch your breath’ moments in the day.

Alternatively, if it’s escapism and adventure that you are after in these moments, then take up Grylls’ own suggestion, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, by David Grann, a true story yet wildly adventurous. For those in search of more light-hearted reading, then turn to another stalwart of Re-enchanting reading lists, C.S. Lewis, whose The Silver Chair comes recommended by NYT columnist and author, Ross Douthat. As Lewis himself said, ‘a children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.’ Perhaps it’s time to put Lewis’ own works to the test.

Long summer days of the kind envisaged in children’s books may now be a distant memory for most of us, but with each change in season comes a new reason to pick up some reading material. I hope these autumnal days with their familiar ritual of falling leaves lead to a home-grown ritual of turning leaves for you.

Some further suggestions:

Letters from Nazareth by Richard Carter – Meditations on home from St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Her First American by Lore Segal – An exploration of Jewish-Black trauma and solidarity in 1950s New York.

seven steeples by Sara Baume – A meditative novel on the rhythmic course of life in rural Ireland.

How Bad Are Bananas? by Mike Berners-Lee – Bite-sized explanations of our place in a changing climate.

Season 8 starts 12 November

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