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From comedian & writer Paul Kerensa:

The bumper TV listings are out! For many of us, Christmas isn’t Christmas until we’ve got 300 pages of viewing, ready to circle with a pen. The cover picture’s reliably a snowman or Father Christmas – but I love the image on the first Christmas Radio Times in the early 20s, when it just printed the times, of radio, hence the name. The picture was a homely fireplace, but the family had turned their backs away from it, towards a new box in the corner. They’d swivelled their chairs, like the seats on The Voice, except I don’t think they had buttons.

We used to gather around the fire, then the radio, or the TV. Now we long for the days when we’d gather round anything together. Instead we’re left to our own devices – phones and tablets stream different channels to different relatives in different rooms, via networks I barely understand. I still don’t get how you can have a Channel 5 and a Channel 4+1 that show different things.

So in my TV listings, I’m circling some shows we can all watch together. Maybe the family will gather to watch Home Alone, then realise we ironically forgot one child upstairs on his smartphone.

One thing I love about the Nativity is how all-comers are welcome. Local salt-of-the-earth shepherds, far-travelling wise men – let alone angels and farm animals, all gathered for that baby. That baby grew up to tell a tale about a lost sheep – how a shepherd leaves the 99 he’s got, to find the one who’s missing – because the missing one is loved and matters.

I guess the shepherds circled with pens too. Not highlighting TV guides, but gathering their flock – no one excluded. Like two brilliant people I know, whose initiative helps those who’d otherwise spend Christmas alone: an online map of Christmas Day events that they – that anyone – can join. 

Whatever we gather round this Christmas – a manger or a log-fire, the box in the corner with a cracking drama, the radio roaring some Rita Ora, or the dinner table with Jamie’s spiced roast goose... Wherever we are, if we include and welcome all, I think that’s a bit of God we’re putting on Earth – and after all, Christmas isn’t Christmas without that.