2. What PGS Staff Are Reading, Watching and Listening to this Christmas

Portsmouth Point editors asked members of staff to share their favourite Christmas songs, books and films. 

Mr Doyle

(source: Fair Use, Wikipedia)

My favourite film has always been A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim as Scrooge. He gives a magnificent performance and the set is spot on. It really begins the season for me. My favourite song is more difficult to choose! If traditional, then it has to be 'Oh, Holy Night' with a strong tenor lead – it has the power to really move the listener, particularly if played on Christmas Eve itself. Bringing me slightly more up-to-date, I would choose Bing Crosby’s White Christmas as it is always the album I play when baking my seasonal cake … in August!

However, this year, I will probably go with “Sanitiser’s Coming to Town” or even “Frosty Got Furloughed”

Feliz Navidad!

Mr Wiggins

‘When the Thames Froze’ (2011) by Smith & Burrows

This is a lesser-known little gem of a Christmas song. Released as a one-off collaboration by members of The Editors and Razorlight (I don’t think that counts as an indie ‘super group’) nine years ago, it’s wistful and melancholic lyrics have become arguably even more contemporarily relevant with the turbulence and division of recent years (‘The years go by so fast, let’s hope the next beats the last’). All the best Christmas songs, I would argue, have a healthy dose of sadness and melancholy within them (the ones I like do anyway) and this isn’t exactly cheerful but it is lovely and has all the required ‘extras’ of any good self-respecting festive tune (trumpets, marching drums, bells etc.). The song also has some nice historical allusions to the ‘frost fairs’ that were irregularly held on the Thames when it froze over; these didn’t actually happen as often as we tend to think; only six recorded between 695 AD and 1814. The higher Thames through London last froze in 1962-3 and it seems unlikely, with climate change, that this is something many of us will ever see in our lifetime.

‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ (1965 TV special), especially the soundtrack by the Vince Guaraldi Trio

The first ever animated TV version of Charlie Brown, Snoopy and all the ‘Peanuts’ comic characters, this was – somewhat predictably – sponsored in its making by Coca-Cola and has become a Christmas staple in America ever since. The cartoon itself is very sweet and guaranteed to make you feel festive but the real triumph is the soundtrack composed or arranged and recorded by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi and accompanists. The best and, by miles, least annoying festive background music, this is the perfect soundtrack to Christmas Dinner.