Christmas Eve and Christmas Viewing Highlights 2006
The Watcher Column for Canberra Times 19 December 2006 By Kaz Cooke


On Christmas Eve you need to put out a carrot for the reindeer, and a beer and a biccie for jolly old... oh, look at the time. May as well prop in front of the TV for a while. And on Christmas night you'll be too stonkered and full of puddin' to move, so turn on the box again and let it all wash over you.


CHRISTMAS EVE TV HIGHLIGHTS

The ABC will book end the day before Christmas with two festive offerings. First up at 7.15 am it's Postman Pat's Magic Christmas, and I quote: "Pat has so much mail to deliver. Will he get his rounds done in time for the village Christmas party and his surprise visit as Santa Claus?" That's about as rhetorical as a question gets, aside from "Do you want another sherry, Nanna?".

Later cometh Hymns of Glory: Carols from St Peter's Cathedral, Adelaide, at 7:30pm. "From the little baby in the manger, the star in the east, a simple cattle shed with ass standing by," trills ABC Publicity, "to the signs and symbols of hope, 'Hymns of Glory' is filled with the joy at Nazareth two millennia ago. The program also features the poetry of Michael Leunig and the intimacy and magnificence of Australian music and liturgy. Popular carols like Away in a Manger, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, and O Come All Ye Faithful are lavishly covered." Personally I would rather stick a fork in my eye, but there is always something to be said for an ass standing by.

You will be disastonished to hear that Carols By Candlelight will be on the Nine/WIN Network, at 9 pm. Hence the need for wax-based illumination. I think you can assume Ray Martin, I think you can anticipate celebrities akimbo, some of whom will have pleasant singing voices and Santa hats. Cute kids in crowd. There'll be absolute carols. There'll be a certain amount of candlelight. Aside from that, the chances of some sort of major surprise are, like most of the girl celebrities, increasingly slim.

In the ratings, this will probably out-do In Search of Santa Claus on SBS at 8 pm. This doco promises "criminological acumen" in finding out how Saint Nicholas of Turkey, fodder for religious icons, ended up in a red suit living in the North Pole with aeronautical reindeer, not to mention the abundance of elvery. Little known Christmas facts are ferreted out - St Nicholas's bones were nicked in the tenth century, for example. Which, if you ask me, is fitting punishment for a guy who was said to punish children if they didn't obey their parents, the interfering old hagiograph. The Dutch started giving presents on St Nick's feast day (good call), then Nordic folklore fanciers noticed the whole thing lacked reindeer, and the Coca Cola company started advertising with a twinkly, whiskery, ruddy cove in their livery of red and white, and Nick's your avuncular figure.

In the time-honoured, tardy fashion of many cable TV stations, Foxtel's UKTV is showing the Parkinson Christmas Special from 2004 at 7.30 pm. I don't know who's on, my best guess is Billy Connolly, Billy Connolly, and Billy Connolly. UKTV will also show the ghosts of old Christmas specials past (French and Saunders, Grumpy Old Men, Grumpy Old Women, The Vicar of Dibley) in early January. You'll be up to pussy's bow with ye olde cracker jokes.


CHRISTMAS DAY TV HIGHLIGHTS
(Aside from Aunty Dawn's Russian-style salad with Canned Curried Sausages Surprise).

(Warning: readers going further are advised that this column contains medium-level rudeness about a Vatican insider and thoughtless so-called jokes about a nationwide historical tragedy. Reader discretion is advised. This column is rated M for mature audiences.)

Compass: An Aussie Irish Christmas on the ABC at 7:30PM will combine a Mass and Irish-Australian concert at Hyde barracks in Sydney, which will broadcast live here and in Ireland, where it will be, let me see, don't tell me, morning, probably. (Can't slip one past me.) Hyde Barracks is where they used to incarcerate not only Irish convicts, but starving peasant orphans who'd run away from the great potato famine, so look out for cheerful ditties such as "Bridie's Got the Diphteria and 10 Wee Babbie On The Way" and "Smash Another Stinkin' Landowner for Me, Boyo And One For Yeself".

Cardinal George Pell will put in an appearance, because if there's one thing the Irish haven't had enough of, it's 19th century-style punitive clergy. Maybe the cranky cardie can restrain himself from complaining about gay people, women, contraception, children, science, the way the earth goes around the sun, school curricula and the embarrassing way the Australian football team has of smacking the Irish team around instead of playing the game at hand. I hope they bring over Sinead O'Connor to pelt him with bread rolls.

SouthernCross/Network 10's Panel team will be back at 8.30 pm with The Panel Christmas Wrap, the traditional mix of chatty palaver, charity dedications, silly sketches and a look back at the past year. (Which, I think you'll find, if you check with Cardinal Pell, was 1953).