Christmas Favourites

Here's my list. 
Favourite Christmas film: 'The Apartment', directed by Billy Wilder, starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred McMurray. It's set in late 1950s New York in winter. The main events take place over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and include infidelity, heavy drinking to assuage heartbreak, a suicide attempt. And yet, the film has a lightness, humour, and a happy ending. 
Favourite Christmas book: 'Emma' by Jane Austen, has a wonderfully funny and character-revealing Christmas party. Emma, is convinced the self-regarding rector, Mr Elton, is a perfect match for her protegée, Harriet Smith. She thinks she has engineered the match. But Mr Elton has other designs..... 
But the Christmas scene that has lingered in my memory since childhood is the 'Dulce Domum' chapter in 'The Wind in the Willows'. 
Favourite Christmas music: I love 'The Wexford Carol', a traditional Irish carol made popular when it was transcribed by the organist and musical director of St Aidan's cathedral in Enniscorthy. And every Christmas I play a CD I bought in 1987 after hearing it playing in a record shop near where I then lived. 'Joululauluja' is a selection of Finnish Christmas carols, including two by Sibelius. Magnificent. 
Favourite Christmas poems: I have several favourite Christmas poems. My top two are 'A Christmas Childhood' by Patrick Kavanagh, and 'The Oxen' by Thomas Hardy.
It will be a quiet Christmas in our house this year, but traditions are maintained. The tree is decorated by baubles stored in the 'Christmas drawer' and brought out once a year along with the Christmas candlestick, the wooden figures of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus, bought in Bethlehem twenty years ago, and several sets of Christmas lights.
Happy Christmas!