Christmas

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“It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” is a poem and Christmas carol written by Edmund Sears, pastor of the Unitarian Church in Weston, Massachusetts. It first appeared on December 29, 1849 in the Christian Register in Boston.
Sears is said to have written these words at the request of his friend, W. P. Lunt, a minister [...]

Dmitri Medvedev, the Russian President, today attended the midnight service in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour cathedral to celebrate Christmas in the Eastern Orthodox Church. The service was presided over by Metropolitan Cyril, the interim leader of the Russian Orthodox Churchsince the death of Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy II in December. Head of [...]

Christmas is a time for tradition, don’t we all know it! But, there are several modern day traditions that we reckon a lot of you have begun to notice, here is a list of the Top Ten Modern Christmas Traditions that we’re sure many of you will experience at least to some degree this Festive [...]

Leonard Cohen wrote this beautiful song and Jeff Buckley did the timeless version of it which famously took many takes and he still wasn’t satisfied. The final cut had to be spliced out of three different recordings. Alexandra Burke sang it to try to get to Christmas number 1, but save your ears and download [...]

Scandic hotels are offering log cabins with their own sauna, kitchen and fire for those who really want to get away from it all this Winter. There is even a one person log cabin in this development in Finnish Lapland. You can choose a lift pass for skiing or half-board food. Breakfast is included in [...]

Here are the Christmas Day TV listings for Thursday 25th December 2008. Stop the arguments before they begin and plan your festive viewing with programmes for every taste – from carols to Deal or No Deal.
BBC1
11:30pm Christmas Midnight Eucharist
12:40am Weatherview
12:45am Grumpy Old Men
2:25am Joins BBC News
6:00am Breakfast
9:00am Hotel Trubble
9:30am The Slammer
10:00am Pinky and Perky
10:15am Frankenstein’s [...]

ITV 1 Wednesday, 24 December 2008, 11:25AM – 12:25PM
Aled Jones goes in search of the people, places and fascinating stories behind Britain’s best loved Christmas Carols. Along the way he reveals his own personal favourite carol and exclusively performs all carols featured in the programme, along with the internationally renowned boys choir, Libera and The [...]

The hymn tune of “O Come All Ye Faithful” was originally written for a latin text “Adeste Fideles” and was composed by John Francis Wade in 1743. There are eight verses but the extra four are not often sung in England. The best arrangement of this song is in the Carols for Choirs books with [...]

The MechRC is a dancing Transformer which can be programmed in the same way as a computer game using an animation strip on your PC. It was dancing on Paul O’Grady this afternoon and took Cliff Richard somewhat by surprise. It is available for £399 just click here.
With over a hundred pre-installed motions and sounds [...]

Here is a list of Christmas concerts and events in Swansea over the festive season, some of which are free! If you would like us to add your event to this list, just leave a comment at the bottom of the article and we’ll put it in. You don’t even have to leave your e-mail [...]