The history of Christmas carols and four famous faces discuss their favourites

Even the biggest Scrooge has a Christmas carol that transports them to another place. Helen O’Callaghan chats to four well known faces and voices about their favourite.

A Christmas carol can instantly make you a time-traveller. ‘Away in a Manger’ puts me back on the farm of my childhood, where it was easy to imagine a baby in a manger with cattle lowing — the same place where I instinctively understood the wide spaces of ‘Silent Night’, from the mother in the stable to the shepherds on the hill to the angels in a high, star-filled sky.

The jaunty tunes of ‘Jingle Bells’ on the radio magically transport me to a schoolyard of girls playing a skipping game, just after we’ve stuck holly and ivy to wire coat-hangers to make Christmas wreaths. I hear the cheerful warnings of ‘Santa Claus is Coming to Town’ and recall that big-brother-is-watching feeling, long before the era of reality shows.