Welcome to our special calendar, counting down from the day after Bonfire Night to Christmas Day 2020. Each window will carry you towards the big day with festive suggestions for viewing and listening, as well as lines of poetry, quotes & trivia and bundles of ideas to help you plan for Christmas. We are living in extraordinary times when, perhaps more than ever, the diversion of festive cheer has never been more crucial.

During the coronavirus outbreak, many people turned to illuminating their Christmas lights and watching Christmas films to brighten their days. Maybe we can all look to Christmastime now to bring us more light at the end of an unprecedented and life-changing year. This calendar is our humble way of offering some seasonal encouragement. But we appreciate Christmas 2020 is likely to be very different for so many of us.

November

Elf Helper: To make the most out of the watch and listen suggestions on the calendar, you might like to quickly click through a few pages at a time in advance each week to discover our recommendations and see if you have the relevant music, films or television programmes to hand. Hopefully, being such a good friend of Christmas, you’ll already have plenty of festive songs, movies and TV specials in your collection. Fill in the gaps by downloading, streaming, purchasing, recording or borrowing. Don’t feel you have to follow our suggestions to the letter, either. Get into the festive spirit however you choose. 

December