All language subtitles for BBC.Cunk.on.Christmas.720p.HDTV.x264.AAC.mkv[eztv]

Christmas is the most
magical time of the year,

the one day when you can eat
chocolate, nuts and sprouts

and watch television...apart from
all the other days you can do that.

Whether you're a Christian or a Jew,
a Muslim or a Hindu,

a Jedi or a Womble,

Christmas is everywhere.

On television,

in the high street,

even in normally sacred places
like churches.

Christmas is such a big deal

that even Richard Dawkins
probably does it

and he thinks God's a twat who isn't
even there!

But what is Christmas anyway?

Do we still need it in 2016?

I'm going on a journey right up
Christmas to discover

whether the true meaning of
Christmas has any meaning today,

or whether that meaning snapped off
somewhere along the way,

leaving it meaningless...

whatever that means.

I'll be talking to experts about
every single Christmas

that's ever happened,
as well as finding out where

Christmas traditions and giant tubes
of Jaffa Cakes come from.

How do they make
chickens into turkeys?

Turkey and chicken are
two separate birds.

You're joking me. No.

So join me, Philomena Cunk,

as I step into Christmas
and back out again.

This programme contains very strong
language

Christmas, isn't just tinsel and a
long Doctor Who -

it's a festival with traditions
stretching back

across hundreds of years
and almost as many Christmases.

It's hard to imagine now, but,
when Christmas first began,

Christ wasn't even in it.

Psycho Danny Dyer hasn't always been
in EastEnders,

even though he feels like part of
the furniture...

especially when he's trying to act.

Centuries before Jesus arrived,

late December was already a time of
celebration for the pagans,

who existed so long ago
there aren't any YouTubes of them,

so we've had to make do with this
picture.

To find out what the pagans were,
I spoke to an expert.

Were there pagans
before there were humans?

No. You've got to be a human
to do anything.

Pagans are just people who lived in
Europe before Christianity arrived.

How difficult was it for the pagans
to get about on all fours?

They didn't travel on all fours,
they travelled upright like we do.

The pagans worshipped nature,
just like Chris Packham,

and their calendar revolved around
two big annual events,

also like Chris Packham.

One of these events took place in
late December and was known as the

winter solstices-es.

What was the winter soltits?

It's the winter solstice.

Stols...stolstice?

Solstice. Stolestice.

Solstice. Solstice. You've got it.

It's that magical time,
midwinter and midsummer,

when the sun seems to stand still.

To the eye, it appears to stop
moving along the horizon.

Well, you're not meant to look at
it, are you?

Because it hurts your eyes.

You can look at it when it rises
and you can look at it when it sets,

then you can... No, you can't.
It makes you go blind.

You can. Believe...
trust me, you can.

You can't. That's probably why
you've got glasses.

As well as blinding themselves,

the pagans celebrated the solstice
by cutting down holly and ivy and

dragging it into their homes,

along with a giant Yule log which
they'd set fire to.

It sounds rubbish, but with no
App Store to speak of,

killing trees and plants was as good
as entertainment got,

even at Christmas.

Of course, for most people,

it wasn't really Christmas until the
birth of Jesus Christ,

an icon who was almost as revered
back then as Beyonce is today.

Jesus's mum was this woman,
the Virgin Mary,

who one night got
visited by an angel

and told she'd been gotten pregnant
by a Holy Ghost.

Of course, actual ghosts
jizz ectoplasm,

which only contains ghost sperm.

But Jesus wasn't born a phantom,

leading experts to believe Mary
wasn't impregnated by a real ghost,

but by a man in a sheet,
like in Scooby-Doo.

Mary's husband Joseph didn't mind
his son being God's rather than his

because he knew God would probably
buy Jesus loads of toys

and have him on weekends,
which would take the pressure off.

As the birth neared,

Mary and Joseph travelled to
O Little Town Of Bethlehem

only to discover the inn they'd
booked had no rooms in it,

so, instead, they were
put up in a stable.

Today, that'd lead to one
red star on TripAdvisor.

Back then, it led to one big star
in the sky,

which God put there, probably so
they could see the baby coming out.

Mary had to give birth
here on the floor,

like a crack addict,
and then lay him in a manger.

Manger is another word for trough

and it's where we get the name for
modern sandwich chain

Ready To Trough.

The baby Jesus wasn't
an ordinary baby.

He was born with a big yellow circle
around his head,

which must have been hell for Mary
to push out,

especially when you think nothing
had ever been in or out of her down

below before. If only he had been
born a ghost after all,

then he could've just floated out,
clanking chains and going woo.

Why do you think it's important
that Jesus was born?

Would it have been more interesting
if he'd been built, like R2-D2?

It would have been more interesting,

but the important thing is that he
can identify with us

and he was a real human being.

It makes him more sort of relatable,
I suppose. Yes, very much so.

But then, if he's meant to be like
an ordinary bloke and he wanted to

come across as an ordinary bloke,
how come he had all, like,

angels and kings at his stable
on his birthday?

Well, that was a bit weird, wasn't
it? Mmm. Although, of course,

I would want to say that angels are
around all the time.

You don't necessarily see them,
there and then, but sometimes

you catch a glimpse of something out
of the corner of your eye,

or maybe you smell a
nice fragrance...

Vanilla? Maybe.

How many three wise men were there?

Who knows? Oh.

And I think only one of the Gospels
refers to there being three.

It's just three is a good number,
isn't it?

Yeah. It looks good.

But there could have actually been
15 three wise men?

Quite possibly, yes.

It's humbling to think that Jesus
started out with nothing,

born not in a palace,
but in a stable,

just the ordinary son of an ordinary
woman and an ordinary man,

and God Almighty.

Incredibly, the day he was born was
only the beginning of Jesus's life.

As a young man, he kept a low
profile in the wood industry.

But, when he was about 30,
his career took off.

He went on to appear in a number of

thrilling and controversial
paintings, windows and films.

Today, Christ lives in the hearts of
millions of believers,

but still spends Sundays here,
in his dad's house,

so let's go and see if he's in.

No-one was in, as usual,

probably because the Church Wi-Fi
isn't as good as Starbucks'.

But standing in this
old, creaky building

gives you a real sense of history.

Thanks to Jesus's popularity,

Christmas was celebrated for
hundreds of years,

celebrated by people who were buried
long ago

but are still alive in the form of
drawings of themselves,

some dating back as far as the
Middle Ages.

In the Middle Ages, did they know it
was the Middle Ages,

or did they just think,
"This is now"?

You know, how did they know that
they were halfway through time?

They thought "this is now"

and they thought they were
incredibly advanced,

this is the greatest moment that
society would reach to.

It'd be amazing, wouldn't it,
to get someone,

get a Tudor back that we could
resuscitate... Yes.

..cryogenically or something... Yes.

..and then show him what had
happened since he died?

It would blow his mind, wouldn't it?
It would. The internet...

The internet. The internet.

Google. Cars, aeroplanes...
Fitbit watches.

Fitbits.

One thing our time traveller would
recognise is the tradition

of getting drunk and acting up at
Christmas, which, back then,

was known as wassailing.

So, what was wassailing?

Is that like a, sort of...a bit
like bantz now?

What's bantz? Bantz, it's like when
someone's acting like a prick.

Oh, really? What it is is basically
a group of people,

usually a group of men, go around
from house to house

with a big bowl of drink

and they knock on your door and they
sing songs and the idea is that

you're going to swap a drink from
their bowl for a gift.

So it was a bit like trick or
treating then, was it?

It was very like trick or treating.

And what sort of costumes
would they do?

Because there were already covered
in shit, weren't they, with, like,

slugs on them and
mud and everything?

They didn't usually wear costumes.

It was also a way of creating
community cohesion,

going from house to house,

it was something that was supposed
to be fun as well.

So that's really the very early
beginnings of

going from house to house
singing carols.

Because the history lady said that,
we've now cut to this -

some boys singing carols
in a church...on earth.

THEY SING "DING DONG MERRILY ON
HIGH"

OK, OK, I get it, yeah, thanks.

How do you get the music
into the words?

Like, how do you attach the music to
the words in your throat?

We tend to attach the words to
the music instead.

You attach the words to the music?

Yeah. As it's coming up
through your throat?

So does it feel like...?
Where does the music come from?

Does it feel like it's coming from
your stomach,

like you're going to be sick?

But it's, like, nice sick?

Kind of, I guess.

Not all Christmas songs
are quite so religious.

In the 1970s, groups like Slade
reinvented the carol,

appearing on our TV screens,

showcasing a new form of singing
called shouting.

MUSIC: Merry Christmas Everybody
by Slade

This music was loud,
probably to keep Jimmy Savile away.

For years, having a Christmas number
one was the ultimate music industry

badge of honour,

right up there with choking to death
on your own sick.

More recently, songs released from
glossy TV shows like X Factor

took over the Christmas
number one slot.

What's clever is that these songs

have got absolutely no Christmas in
them whatsoever,

probably because if Simon Cowell
touches anything

to do with Christ, he catches fire.

Meanwhile, back in the past,

by the time the Tudor era arrived
and the music all sounded

like what you're hearing now,
Christmas had become an excuse

for gastronomic indulgence.

Tudor feasts were huge

and often included roast goose or
swan or peacock,

basically a big bird roasted whole.

That might sound traumatic, but,
in the days before television,

they didn't know big birds have a
person inside.

To find out more about
Tudor eating habits,

I spoke to food expert Jay Rayner.

So, what sort of things did Tudor
people eat at Christmas?

They ate things like peacock,
didn't they?

What goes with peacock?

What kind of gravy?

There is evidence that they ate
very exotic things,

but that would have been the very,
very richest people.

I suppose the best thing about them
as well is that tail

and that's not going to taste of
anything, is it?

No, that's purely for display.
Hmm. Yeah.

A Tudor Christmas, then, they'd have
peacock, like you say...

No, I think like YOU said.
The Royals had peacock?

I don't know how much peacock was
eaten in Tudor days, I'll be honest.

How did that affect their bowels,
you know,

what comes out of their back holes?

I don't know. I suppose, if they
were eating too much,

it would have caused certain bowel
issues.

I suppose meat, lots of meat...

Lots of meat can...
..compacted together.

Can compact, yes.

And make sort of big, hard stools.

It would have been uncomfortable,
I imagine, but I'm only guessing.

See, that would've been the first
bit that I'd have gone to

if I was a food expert.

Just when our ancestors were getting
well into Christmas indulgence,

history shat out someone who was
allergic to fun, Oliver Cromwell,

king of the Puritans.

Cromwell was a Member of Parliament
who wouldn't wear smart clothes and

never smiled,
a bit like Jeremy Corbyn.

And, just like Corbyn, he wanted to
change the country.

But instead of sitting down
on a train,

he got off his arse and did
something about it -

by starting a Civil War.

Civil War is like a real war, but
not abroad, so it's cheaper,

and that meant ordinary people could
start one, not just kings.

The English Civil War divided the
country down the middle,

like a sort of tooled-up Brexit.

Cromwell won and cut the
king's head off,

which meant he couldn't be
the king any more,

even if everyone
changed their minds.

Now the British public
had taken back control.

No longer did they have to do
whatever the king said.

Instead, they were free to do
whatever Cromwell said.

It turned out Cromwell hated all of
the things kings like,

like feasting and burping and music
and throwing chicken legs over his

shoulder and laughing, and that was
just the tip of the turnip,

because, in 1647,
Cromwell banned Christmas.

According to the Puritans,
Christians shouldn't celebrate

Christmas because it's
not in the Bible.

Instead, they should be inside a
church, which isn't in the Bible,

reading the Bible,
which isn't in the Bible.

The ban on Christmas continued until
after Cromwell's death,

but, by 1660, we'd found a new king,
up a tree.

The new king even had a head,

although it looked a bit like it
belonged to Boycie

off Only Fools And Horses.

And now the monarch was back and the
Puritans had buggered off,

Christmas was free to become more
festive and less religious.

For years, Jesus H Christmas was the
number one face of the festive

period, very much the
Captain Birdseye of Christmas Day,

but his rule over his mighty tinsel
kingdom was to be threatened by

this man, Father Christmas,

street name - Santa Claus.

Like Jesus, Father Christmas is used
as a bribe to make children behave,

although, in his case, the prize
isn't eternal salvation,

but presents.

No wonder the moment Santa came on
the scene

it was game over for Jesus,

who had to accept a lower ranking
job in the global icon industry.

So, where did Santa come from?

If you're thinking the North Pole,

that's because your parents
lied to you.

He actually stepped out of the pages
of history.

Where did Father Christmas
come from?

Father Christmas comes from
Saint Nicholas

and he is a fourth-century Greek
saint and bishop,

and he was very renowned for giving
presents to the poor

and particularly he gave presents
to these three girls.

If he hadn't given them the money,

they would have had to go off and
be prostitutes.

So why was he knocking about with
these prostitutes?

I don't think he knew them very
well, it's just that...

Well, well enough
to give them gifts.

..give them money.
I don't think...

I think he just wanted to save them
from the horrors of...

I think because basically...
They all say that, don't they?

They do. How come shops have
Father Christmases,

but they don't have Jesuses?

Is Jesuses the right term?

Is it Jesi, or...?
I think we'd say figures of Jesus.

Figures of Jesus.

I think that Father Christmas
himself would probably have

preferred there to be
figures of Jesus because, in fact,

there is a medieval story that
Saint Nicholas got in a punch-up

about whether or not God or Jesus
was greater

and was thrown into prison,

so he was obviously very exercised
about the purity of religion.

It's all coming out, isn't it?

You know, because, like, I didn't
know that he used to hang about with

prostitutes or get into fights.

Now I'm feeling less...happy with
him coming down my chimney.

Despite being the
stuff of nightmares,

Santa is the world's most popular
home intruder, probably because,

unlike other home intruders,
he doesn't leave a turd

on your living room carpet,
but a pile of gifts.

Santa has a list of
good and bad children.

The good children will get lots of
presents and so, it turns out,

will the bad children.

In fact, the only ones who won't get
very much are the poor children -

that's because Santa judges a
child's goodness

based largely on parental income.

The sense of magical wonder on a
child's face as they open their

presents, which allegedly makes
Christmas worthwhile,

can last for up to ten seconds.

That's why, for many, Christmas is
synon-nonymous with little ones.

Adults lose the ability to see
Father Christmas,

so, if you want to know more about
him, you have to ask small adults,

which are known as children.

Hello, who are you?
I'm Archie, who are you?

Philomena. Have you ever met
Father Christmas?

I have.

Where did you meet him?

I met him...next to Westfield.

And what was he doing there?
Was he shopping or something?

I think...I'm not quite sure if
Father Christmas is rich.

Mmm. I don't think he is.

How did he get all the presents in,
like, lots of times?

I think he just shoplifts.

OK.

Do you think Father Christmas has
ever met Batman?

In my opinion, Batman's not real.

In my opinion, Batman's not real -
it's just a man called Bruce.

So you don't think they've met?

I think Superman and
Father Christmas have met.

Do you think that Father Christmas
will still be allowed in the country

after Brexit? Yeah, he'll still be
allowed in the country.

Will he? Yeah, because the police
don't know where he's in the air.

Like David Bowie, Santa experimented
with many different looks,

finally settling on the familiar
fat jolly laughing man look

in the late 1800s.

The Queen Victorians were batshit
for Christmas

and popularised many of the
traditions we still do

for no good reason today.

For instance, Queen Victoria's
husband, Prince Albert,

did what his fellow Germans had been
doing for years and had a tree

installed in his lounge.

Albert's tree would remain the most
heavily decorated piece of wood to

grace Buckingham Palace until
the day Roger Moore was knighted.

The Christmas tree is
still the centrepiece

of most festive decorations.

It's covered in lights,
chocolates and baubles,

which is what circles
are called at Christmas.

There are also these
characteristic vines

from the most festive
plant on earth - tinsel.

Tinsel became a decoration because
you can't do anything else with it.

It's horrible in salads and won't
boil down for soup.

For years, the best
Christmas decoration

was the Blue Peter Advent Crown,

which took a load of coat hangers
and tinsel and cleverly transformed

them into a load of tinsel round
some coat hangers.

Now, you'll see how it
all fits together.

Today, some people choose to turn
the outside of their homes

into a giant Advent Crown.

A jolly house covered in electric
lights may be expensive

and use a lot of power,

but it's the perfect way to cheer up
a world worried about climate change

and dwindling resources.

Of course, in Queen Victorian times,

only the super rich had fancy
decorations.

Ordinary, poor people had to
celebrate Christmas

by coughing and counting their
surviving offspring.

Life in Queen Victorian times
was hard.

The streets were full of urchins and
rippers, and there was so much

poverty that people used to go to
prison just to get some bread.

But there was one man who cared -

the greatest prime minister
Britain ever had -

Sir Charles Dickings.

Charles Dickings wanted people to be
generous to those in greater

need, like the poor,
the homeless or the dead,

so he wrote something called
A Christmas Carol,

which was something called a book.

As seen in this powerful and
evocative adaptation,

A Christmas Carol
is about Ebenezer Scrooge,

a character almost as fully realised

as Disney's superior Scrooge McDuck.

Unlike Scrooge McDuck, he's human.

And unlike most humans,
he hates Christmas.

But then, in a terrifying
development,

he starts getting visited by ghosts,

like his house is built on some sort
of Indian burial ground.

The ghosts take him forward and
backwards in time to see different

Christmases, like that thing on
Facebook that shows you old haircuts

and people you don't talk
to anymore.

One ghost shows him the future,
but it's only by a year,

so it's still a Victorian future.

As it is, he sees a future in which
everyone's delighted he's dead.

This convinces him that Christmas is
actually brilliant, which,

to be honest,
the ghost could have done

by giving him a Chocolate Orange -
nobody can argue with that.

After the Victorian era,

good will to all men
caught on so much

that it was almost 12 whole
years before everyone on the planet

decided to kill each other
in the mud.

Although it was scheduled to be over
by Christmas,

the war with Germany
lasted four years.

Mechanised conflict is the most
horrifying legacy

of the 20th century, as anyone who's
seen Robot Wars will agree.

But at Christmas 1914,
there was a brief ceasefire.

The fighting stopped.

Soldiers got out of their holes and
joined together in a place called

No Man's Land, showing that,
even at moments of peace,

men will still divide into two
sides and try to beat one another.

The Great War claimed over
17 million lives, making it the

worst incident of football-related
violence of all time.

After the First World War, Christmas
spirit once again reigned supreme,

until the Second World War.

We don't know if Christmas happened
during Second War Two

because there simply
aren't any records.

But there's no footage of Hitler or
Churchill in Santa hats either,

so it's safe to assume it was parked
while they twatted each other.

Once Hitler had defeated the Nazis
by blowing his own brains out,

Christmas returned with a bang

and a second period of food-loving
indulgence dawned.

The modern Christmas dinner
soon became an important

cultural cornerstone of both society
and gravy adverts.

Mum made the gravy.

Could you talk me through what makes
a perfect Christmas dinner?

Once you've got the right people
round the table,

you need a light starter.

If you give people too much...
Not prawn cocktails?

No, no... Well, I don't know. A good
prawn cocktail is a lovely thing.

I don't like prawns. Do you not?
No, they're bottom feeders.

OK, I tend to do platters of
charcuterie, salami and ham, and

maybe some pickles and things for
people to pick up.

I won't have that. You wouldn't have
that? No. No? OK.

And then you come to the main event,

so maybe a three-bird roast or a
roast goose...

bread sauce, gravy.
But I don't understand bread sauce.

It's a great way of making a really
savoury sauce.

Bread and sauce are two completely
different things, aren't they?

Well, they are, but you can grind
the bread down

and then cook it in milk to make
a really good sauce.

It just looks like, sort of...jizz.

Thanks to all this
food-based indulgence,

scientists now believe that 80% of
all burps occur at Christmas,

threatening to put a hole in the
oz-one layer at precisely the

moment the sky is full of
vulnerable reindeer.

Eating aside, the other popular form
of Christmas indulgence

is gift-buying from shops.

Critics say Christmas is too
commercialised

and that the Bible has being
replaced by the Argos catalogue,

just because it's got a better
selection of hair straighteners.

Recently, Christmas shopping has
started to look less like a

Supermarket Sweep Christmas special

and more like a civil war with
carrier bags.

No wonder more people than ever stay
indoors shopping on the computer.

So, is Christmas all just about
buying stuff these days?

How much money gets made
at Christmas?

Altogether, I'm sure we spend

hundreds of millions of pounds
at Christmas.

And how big a cut does
the Church get?

The Church doesn't get anything.

They don't get anything? No. No.

The supermarket near me has got
about 30 tills.

How many tills does Amazon have?

They must have loads.

They don't have any tills.
What?

They have a computer.

One computer? Yeah. Because no-one
goes there, do they?

They just... I know, but I thought
they still had to ring it through.

Mmm. No, the computer does all that.

So there's one man at a
computer, just going...?

No, I don't think there's a man.

No, no, it just goes automatically.
You do that. You're the till.

Making money is so important at
Christmas that shops pull out all

the stops to fill the screen with
jolly images of buying things

and their adverts have evolved from
cheerful animated catalogues full of

famous people smiling at you

to heart-warming present-day mini
movies about infested trampolines.

Adverts aren't the only programmes
on at Christmas -

there are also programmes
on at Christmas.

For decades, Christmas television
has been an enchanting place,

a magical land where people danced
and sang in a doomed attempt

to convey the sheer magic
of Christmas.

A time in which newsreaders
cavorted with comedians,

and real live snowmen
were gathered from the wild

and encouraged to sing their

haunting traditional songs
in the studio.

THEY SING "JINGLE BELLS"

But perhaps the most reassuring
Christmas programme is EastEnders,

which for years has provided an
important public service

by depicting worse families having
an even shitter time than yours.

You're lying!

What are you doing? Bianca!

What are you doing?!

Films are a mainstay at Christmas

and one familiar film is the searing
musical The Sound Of Music,

which is about a woman who sings to
hills about hills in the hills.

# The hills are alive
with the sound of music... #

It's always on at Christmas,

probably because it's got nuns in
it so you think about Jesus.

And also Nazis,

so you think about The Great Escape,
which is probably on on Boxing Day.

But the most Christmassy film of all
time is also the most exciting,

Die Hard.

People think Die Hard is a
gripping and exciting action film,

just because, as you can see, it is,

but it's also a heart-warming
Yuletide story

full of the magic of Christmas.

It's got everything...

'Singing...'
HE SCREAMS

'..a man up a chimney...'

Warming yourself in front of a
roaring fire...

Shit!

'..while the snow flutters down
outside.'

Brotherly love...

'Hey, look, I love you...

'So do a lot of the other guys.'

..cranberry sauce,
excessive sherry drinking...

God, that man looks really pissed.

..season's greetings...

Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.

..your dad conked out in a chair
wearing a Santa hat in his Christmas

jumper, angels majestically soaring
through the air and, of course,

Jesus Christ Powell.

Jesus Christ, Powell!

TV's becoming a thing of the olden
past, like sundials or ploughs,

because, today, everyone has their
own little screen,

so they can ignore their immediate
surroundings on an individual basis

instead of as part of a
collective effort.

We're often told to feel sorry for
those who are alone at Christmas,

but these days that's all of us
and it's brilliant.

Best of all, this kind of technology

is set to become more immersive
than ever.

For instance, this man from the year
2018

is enjoying a virtual Christmas
with a family

of characters from the
Nintendo universe.

Meanwhile, this man is experiencing
the true meaning of Christmas by

giving birth to a virtual baby Jesus
in a stable made of polygons.

HE SCREAMS

Today, the true meaning of Christmas
is a mystery,

wrapped up in sherry and Monopoly
and monkey nuts,

but at least, at this time of
togetherness and warmth,

we can all agree what the true
spirit of Christmas is...

Baileys.

SHE SLURPS NOISILY

Merry Christmas and a very New
Year.