BBC Scotland has a stocking full of festive goodies across television and radio to entertain audiences.
There’s plenty to keep everyone entertained across TV and radio on Christmas Eve and into Christmas Day, to capture the festive spirit.
Christmas Classics on Christmas Eve will be broadcast on BBC Radio Scotland from 10-11.30pm.
Recorded at The Music Hall in Aberdeen and conducted by Richard Dunk, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra invites you to an evening of orchestral magic.
From music as bracing and exhilarating as a midnight sleigh-ride, to the comforts of familiar seasonal
favourites, host Jamie MacDougall guides you through a rich mix of classics that includes the rousing spirit of Handel’s ‘Messiah’, Yuletide carols, and all those festive songs from the Great American Songbook that
everyone knows.
This is immediately followed by the Christmas Watchnight Service brings carols and reflection with prayers and readings to draw Christmas Eve to a close.
A Christmas Celebration will be broadcast on TV from 11.45pm–12.30am, as BBC Scotland brings a mix of words and music presented by Sally Magnusson to take us from the last moments of Christmas Eve into Christmas morning.
The programme comes from Greyfriars Kirk in Edinburgh, where the first ever worship was on Christmas day
1620. Greyfriars is marking the moment now as it was unable to celebrate the 400th anniversary because of
Covid.
Sally Magnusson (Photo: BBC Scotland)
A socially distanced small congregation, let by a choir from neighbouring George Heriot’s School sing
familiar Christmas Carols led by Alba Brass. Other music will be sung by the National Youth Choirs of
Scotland Chamber Choir, by internationally renowned Dunedin Consort, and by gospel singer Grace
Agbana. Readings are by pupils of Heriot’s, and include newly commissioned poems by Glasgow writer Mary
Neal.
On Christmas Day at noon, there will be Christmas Reflections at the Quay. Hosted from the foyer of BBC Scotland’s Pacific Quay studios, it is led by Canon Michael McMahon and Rev Maggie McTernan, with a poem by Fiona Stewart.
David Strachan talks to Oxford Physics Professor Ard Louis about how he reconciles his scientific work with Christian faith in the Christmas story.
Familiar carols, recorded in Greyfriars Kirk, are led by a massed choir of the National Youth Choir of
Scotland.
From 8-9am on Christmas Day on BBC Radio Scotland, join Cathy MacDonald, Tony Kearney and guests as they share their Hebridean island memories of Christmas past, discuss the start of new traditions and the hope of light returning after the long, dark nights.
100 Years of Scotland’s Stories are marked on BBC Radio Scotland from 6-6.30pm.
Ahead of the BBC Centenary in 2022, Michelle McManus launches 100 Years of Scotland’s Stories and hears from some of Scotland’s best-loved names who reveal how stories passed down within their family have been a source of inspiration to them.
Singer songwriter Emily Sandé reveals why she has such strong commitment to education, actor and comedian Sanjeev Kohli shares a story of family courage and Scottish poet and playwright, Liz Lochhead remembers her inspirational granny.
Robert Carlyle
There’s a special guest on a Christmas Day episode of Stark Talk from 6.30-7pm, as Edi Stark interviewsactor Robert Carlyle, a shining star of theatre, film and television.
He has a roll call of villainy and terrorism, Machiavellian science and international sex trafficking. He’s been inside the head of Adolf Hitler….and also John Lennon. He’s been a triumphant one night stand stripper, a Bond villain invulnerable to pain, a beloved Highland policeman, a priest more than once, and most recently a Tory Prime minister… and of course, he is the unforgettable Begbie.
Like his father, who brought him up singlehandedly, he was working as a painter and decorator when, for
reasons he still can’t explain, he enrolled in acting classes at the Glasgow Arts Centre at the age of 18.
In a whistle-stop tour of his life, we hear about growing up in Maryhill, drama school in Glasgow, founding the Raindog theatre company and how playing a Liverpool psychopath in the drama series Cracker changed his path, professionally and personally.
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