The Christmas Party

A broadcast on behalf of the Christmas Party! An accidentally profound film about human aspiration, longing, suffering, the expression of these in literature, art and music the possibility (but by no means the certainty) of God and what that means as discussed amicably by four old and slightly tipsy friends. The sax episode “I can’t play for laughing!” steals the show - funny and musical (not always at the same time!) and I think we all come together more during that than on anything else, though we are definitely 'together' as a group throughout. Carols and Nativity poems (by U.A Fanthorpe and T.S. Eliot) and songs (Judy Garland’s “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”) offer their mixture of divine longing and wry realism, holy and broken hallelujahs, true and bum notes. And no Christmas story would be complete without a compelling modern tale of an Inn too busy cashing in to offer warm rooms of welcome. John’s emotion at the end of the Muggeridge is a revelation, a powerful ending that one doesn't expect but which resolves all the rest in a way one feels was always coming.