All language subtitles for Cunk.on.Christmas.2016.720p.HEVC.x265-MeGusta

Christmas is the most
magical time of the year,

the one day when you can
eat chocolate, nuts and sprouts

and watch television... apart from
all the other days you can do that.

Whether you're a Christian
or a Jew, a Muslim or a Hindu,

a Jedi or a Womble,
Christmas is everywhere.

On television,
in the high street,

even in normally sacred
places like churches.

Christmas is such a big deal that
even Richard Dawkins probably does it

and he thinks God's a
twat who isn't even there!

But what is Christmas anyway?

Do we still need it in 2016?

I'm going on a journey right
up Christmas to discover

whether the true meaning
of Christmas has any meaning today,

or whether that meaning snapped
off somewhere along the way,

leaving it meaningless
whatever that means.

I'll be talking to experts
about every single Christmas

that's ever happened,
as well as finding out where

Christmas traditions and giant
tubes of Jaffa Cakes come from.

How do they make
chickens into turkeys?

Turkey and chicken
are two separate birds.

- You're joking me.
- No.

So join me, Philomena Cunk, as I step
into Christmas and back out again.

Christmas, isn't just tinsel
and a long Doctor Who

it's a festival with
traditions stretching back

across hundreds of years
and almost as many Christmases.

It's hard to imagine now, but,
when Christmas first began,

Christ wasn't even in it.

Psycho Danny Dyer hasn't
always been in EastEnders,

even though he feels
like part of the furniture

especially when
he's trying to act.

Centuries before Jesus arrived,

late December was already a time
of celebration for the pagans,

who existed so long ago there
aren't any YouTubes of them,

so we've had to make
do with this picture.

To find out what the pagans
were, I spoke to an expert.

Were there pagans
before there were humans?

No. You've got to be a
human to do anything.

Pagans are just people who lived in
Europe before Christianity arrived.

How difficult was it for the
pagans to get about on all fours?

They didn't travel on all fours,
they travelled upright like we do.

The pagans worshipped nature,
just like Chris Packham,

and their calendar revolved
around two big annual events,

also like Chris Packham.

One of these events took place in
late December and was known as the

winter solstices-es.

What was the winter soltits?

It's the winter solstice.

Stols... stolstice?

- Solstice.
- Stolestice.

- Solstice. - Solstice.
- You've got it.

It's that magical time,
midwinter and midsummer,

when the sun
seems to stand still.

To the eye, it appears to
stop moving along the horizon.

Well, you're not meant
to look at it, are you?

Because it hurts your eyes.

You can look at it when it rises
and you can look at it when it sets,

- then you can...
- No, you can't. It makes you go blind.

You can. Believe...
trust me, you can.

You can't. That's probably
why you've got glasses.

As well as blinding themselves,

the pagans celebrated the solstice
by cutting down holly and ivy and

dragging it into their homes,

along with a giant Yule
log which they'd set fire to.

It sounds rubbish, but with
no App Store to speak of,

killing trees and plants was
as good as entertainment got,

even at Christmas.

Of course, for most people,

it wasn't really Christmas
until the birth of Jesus Christ,

an icon who was almost as revered
back then as Beyonce is today.

Jesus's mum was this woman,
the Virgin Mary,

who one night got
visited by an angel

and told she'd been gotten
pregnant by a Holy Ghost.

Of course, actual ghosts jizz ectoplasm,
which only contains ghost sperm.

But Jesus wasn't born a phantom,

leading experts to believe Mary
wasn't impregnated by a real ghost,

but by a man in a sheet,
like in Scooby-Doo.

Mary's husband Joseph didn't mind
his son being God's rather than his

because he knew God would
probably buy Jesus loads of toys

and have him on weekends, which
would take the pressure off.

As the birth neared,

Mary and Joseph travelled
to O Little Town Of Bethlehem

only to discover the inn they'd
booked had no rooms in it,

so, instead,
they were put up in a stable.

Today, that'd lead to one
red star on TripAdvisor.

Back then, it led to
one big star in the sky,

which God put there, probably so
they could see the baby coming out.

Mary had to give
birth here on the floor,

like a crack addict,
and then lay him in a manger.

Manger is another
word for trough

and it's where we get the name for
modern sandwich chain Ready To Trough.

The baby Jesus
wasn't an ordinary baby.

He was born with a big
yellow circle around his head,

which must have been
hell for Mary to push out,

especially when you think nothing
had ever been in or out of her down

below before. If only he had
been born a ghost after all,

then he could've just floated out,
clanking chains and going woo.

Why do you think it's
important that Jesus was born?

Would it have been more interesting
if he'd been built, like R2-D2?

It would have been
more interesting,

but the important thing is
that he can identify with us

and he was a real human being.

- It makes him more sort of relatable, I suppose.
- Yes, very much so.

But then, if he's meant to be like
an ordinary bloke and he wanted to

come across as an ordinary
bloke, how come he had all, like,

angels and kings at
his stable on his birthday?

Well, that was a bit weird, wasn't it?
Although, of course,

I would want to say that
angels are around all the time.

You don't necessarily see them,
there and then, but sometimes

you catch a glimpse of something
out of the corner of your eye,

or maybe you smell
a nice fragrance...

- Vanilla?
- Maybe.

How many three
wise men were there?

Who knows?

And I think only one of the Gospels
refers to there being three.

It's just three is a
good number, isn't it?

- Yeah.
- It looks good.

But there could have actually
been 15 three wise men?

Quite possibly, yes.

It's humbling to think that
Jesus started out with nothing,

born not in a palace,
but in a stable,

just the ordinary son of an
ordinary woman and an ordinary man,

and God Almighty.

Incredibly, the day he was born was
only the beginning of Jesus's life.

As a young man, he kept a low
profile in the wood industry.

But, when he was about 30,
his career took off.

He went on to
appear in a number of

thrilling and controversial
paintings, windows and films.

Today, Christ lives in the
hearts of millions of believers,

but still spends Sundays here,
in his dad's house,

so let's go and see if he's in.

No-one was in, as usual,

probably because the Church Wi-Fi
isn't as good as Starbucks'.

But standing in this old,
creaky building

gives you a real
sense of history.

Thanks to Jesus's popularity,

Christmas was celebrated
for hundreds of years,

celebrated by people
who were buried long ago

but are still alive in the form
of drawings of themselves,

some dating back as
far as the Middle Ages.

In the Middle Ages, did
they know it was the Middle Ages,

or did they just think,
"This is now"?

You know, how did they know that
they were halfway through time?

They thought "this is now"

and they thought they were
incredibly advanced,

this is the greatest moment
that society would reach to.

It'd be amazing, wouldn't it, to get a
Tudor back that we could resuscitate...

- Yes.
- ...cryogenically or something...

..and then show him what
had happened since he died?

- It would blow his mind, wouldn't it?
- It would. The internet...

- The internet.
- The internet.

- Google.
- Cars, aeroplanes...

- Fitbit watches.
- Fitbits.

One thing our time
traveller would recognise

is the tradition of getting
drunk and acting up at Christmas,

which, back then,
was known as wassailing.

So, what was wassailing?

Is that like a, sort of...

- A bit like bantz now?
- What's bantz?

Bantz, it's like when
someone's acting like a prick.

Really? What it is is
basically a group of people,

usually a group of men,
go around from house to house

with a big bowl of drink

and they knock on your door
and they sing songs and the idea is that

you're going to swap a drink
from their bowl for a gift.

So it was a bit like trick
or treating then, was it?

It was very like
trick or treating.

And what sort
of costumes would they do?

Because there were already covered
in shit, weren't they, with, like,

slugs on them and mud
and everything?

They didn't usually
wear costumes.

It was also a way of creating
community cohesion,

going from house to house,

it was something that was
supposed to be fun as well.

So that's really the
very early beginnings of

going from house to
house singing carols.

Because the history lady said
that, we've now cut to this

some boys singing carols
in a church... on earth.

OK, OK, I get it, yeah, thanks.

How do you get the
music into the words?

Like, how do you attach the music
to the words in your throat?

We tend to attach the
words to the music instead.

You attach the
words to the music?

- Yeah.
- As it's coming up through your throat?

So does it feel like...?
Where does the music come from?

Does it feel like it's
coming from your stomach,

like you're going to be sick?

But it's, like, nice sick?

Kind of, I guess.

Not all Christmas songs
are quite so religious.

In the 1970s, groups like
Slade reinvented the carol,

appearing on our TV screens,

showcasing a new form
of singing called shouting.

This music was loud, probably
to keep Jimmy Savile away.

For years, having a Christmas number
one was the ultimate music industry

badge of honour, right up there with
choking to death on your own sick.

More recently, songs released
from glossy TV shows like X Factor

took over the Christmas
number one slot.

What's clever is
that these songs

have got absolutely no
Christmas in them whatsoever,

probably because if Simon
Cowell touches anything

to do with Christ,
he catches fire.

Meanwhile, back in the past,

by the time the Tudor era
arrived and the music all sounded

like what you're hearing now,
Christmas had become an excuse

for gastronomic indulgence.

Tudor feasts were huge and often
included roast goose or swan or peacock,

basically a big
bird roasted whole.

That might sound traumatic, but,
in the days before television,

they didn't know big
birds have a person inside.

To find out more about
Tudor eating habits,

I spoke to food
expert Jay Rayner.

So, what sort of things did
Tudor people eat at Christmas?

They ate things like peacock,
didn't they?

What goes with peacock?

What kind of gravy?

There is evidence that
they ate very exotic things,

but that would have been
the very, very richest people.

I suppose the best thing
about them as well is that tail

and that's not going to
taste of anything, is it?

- No, that's purely for display.
- Yeah.

A Tudor Christmas, then, they'd
have peacock, like you say...

- No, I think like YOU said.
- The Royals had peacock?

I don't know how much peacock was
eaten in Tudor days, I'll be honest.

How did that affect
their bowels, you know,

what comes out
of their back holes?

I don't know. I suppose,
if they were eating too much,

it would have caused
certain bowel issues.

I suppose meat, lots of meat...

- Lots of meat can...
- ..compacted together.

Can compact, yes.

And make sort of big,
hard stools.

It would have been uncomfortable,
I imagine, but I'm only guessing.

See, that would've been the
first bit that I'd have gone to

if I was a food expert.

Just when our ancestors were getting
well into Christmas indulgence,

history shat out someone who was
allergic to fun, Oliver Cromwell,

king of the Puritans.

Cromwell was a Member of Parliament
who wouldn't wear smart clothes and

never smiled,
a bit like Jeremy Corbyn.

And, just like Corbyn,
he wanted to change the country.

But instead of sitting
down on a train,

he got off his arse and did something
about it by starting a Civil War.

Civil War is like a real war,
but not abroad, so it's cheaper,

and that meant ordinary people
could start one, not just kings.

The English Civil War divided
the country down the middle,

like a sort of tooled-up Brexit.

Cromwell won and cut
the king's head off,

which meant he couldn't
be the king any more,

even if everyone
changed their minds.

Now the British public
had taken back control.

No longer did they have to
do whatever the king said.

Instead, they were free to
do whatever Cromwell said.

It turned out Cromwell hated
all of the things kings like,

like feasting and burping and music
and throwing chicken legs over his

shoulder and laughing, and that
was just the tip of the turnip,

because, in 1647,
Cromwell banned Christmas.

According to the Puritans,
Christians shouldn't celebrate

Christmas because
it's not in the Bible.

Instead, they should be inside a
church, which isn't in the Bible,

reading the Bible,
which isn't in the Bible.

The ban on Christmas continued
until after Cromwell's death,

but, by 1660, we'd found
a new king, up a tree.

The new king even had a head,

although it looked a bit
like it belonged to Boycie

off Only Fools And Horses.

And now the monarch was back
and the Puritans had buggered off,

Christmas was free to become
more festive and less religious.

For years, Jesus H Christmas was the
number one face of the festive period,

very much the Captain
Birdseye of Christmas Day,

but his rule over his mighty tinsel
kingdom was to be threatened by

this man, Father Christmas,
street name - Santa Claus.

Like Jesus, Father Christmas is used
as a bribe to make children behave,

although, in his case, the prize
isn't eternal salvation, but presents.

No wonder the moment Santa came on
the scene it was game over for Jesus,

who had to accept a lower ranking
job in the global icon industry.

So, where did Santa come from?

If you're thinking
the North Pole,

that's because
your parents lied to you.

He actually stepped out
of the pages of history.

Where did Father
Christmas come from?

Father Christmas comes
from Saint Nicholas

and he is a fourth-century
Greek saint and bishop,

and he was very renowned
for giving presents to the poor

and particularly he gave
presents to these three girls.

If he hadn't given
them the money,

they would have had to
go off and be prostitutes.

So why was he knocking
about with these prostitutes?

I don't think he knew them
very well, it's just that...

Well,
well enough to give them gifts.

..give them money.
I don't think...

I think he just wanted to
save them from the horrors of...

- I think because basically...
- They all say that, don't they?

- They do.
- How come shops have Father Christmases,

but they don't have Jesuses?

Is Jesuses the right term?

- Is it Jesi, or...?
- I think we'd say figures of Jesus.

Figures of Jesus.

I think that Father Christmas
himself would probably have

preferred there to be figures
of Jesus because, in fact,

there is a medieval story that
Saint Nicholas got in a punch-up

about whether or not God or Jesus was
greater and was thrown into prison,

so he was obviously very exercised
about the purity of religion.

It's all coming out, isn't it?

You know, because, like, I didn't
know that he used to hang about with

prostitutes or get into fights.

Now I'm feeling less... happy
with him coming down my chimney.

Despite being the
stuff of nightmares,

Santa is the world's most popular
home intruder, probably because,

unlike other home intruders,
he doesn't leave a turd

on your living room carpet,
but a pile of gifts.

Santa has a list
of good and bad children.

The good children will get lots
of presents and so, it turns out,

will the bad children.

In fact, the only ones who won't
get very much are the poor children

that's because Santa
judges a child's goodness

based largely on
parental income.

The sense of magical wonder on a child's
face as they open their presents,

which allegedly makes
Christmas worthwhile,

can last for up to ten seconds.

That's why, for many, Christmas is
synon-nonymous with little ones.

Adults lose the ability
to see Father Christmas,

so, if you want to know more about
him, you have to ask small adults,

which are known as children.

- Hello, who are you?
- I'm Archie, who are you?

Philomena. Have you ever
met Father Christmas?

I have.

Where did you meet him?

I met him... next to Westfield.

And what was he doing there?
Was he shopping or something?

I think... I'm not quite sure
if Father Christmas is rich.

I don't think he is.

How did he get all the presents
in, like, lots of times?

I think he just shoplifts.

OK.

Do you think Father Christmas
has ever met Batman?

In my opinion,
Batman's not real.

In my opinion, Batman's not real
it's just a man called Bruce.

So you don't think they've met?

I think Superman and Father
Christmas have met.

Do you think that Father Christmas will
still be allowed in the country after Brexit?

Yeah, he'll still be
allowed in the country.

- Will he?
- Yeah.

Because the police don't
know where he's in the air.

Like David Bowie, Santa experimented
with many different looks,

finally settling on the familiar
fat jolly laughing man look

in the late 1800s.

The Queen Victorians
were batshit for Christmas

and popularised many
of the traditions we still do

for no good reason today.

For instance, Queen Victoria's
husband, Prince Albert,

did what his fellow Germans had
been doing for years and had a tree

installed in his lounge.

Albert's tree would remain the most
heavily decorated piece of wood to

grace Buckingham Palace until
the day Roger Moore was knighted.

The Christmas tree is still the
centrepiece of most festive decorations.

It's covered in lights,
chocolates and baubles,

which is what circles
are called at Christmas.

There are also these
characteristic vines

from the most festive
plant on earth - tinsel.

Tinsel became a decoration because
you can't do anything else with it.

It's horrible in salads
and won't boil down for soup.

For years, the best Christmas decoration
was the Blue Peter Advent Crown,

which took a load of coat hangers
and tinsel and cleverly transformed

them into a load of tinsel
round some coat hangers.

Now, you'll see how
it all fits together.

Today, some people choose to
turn the outside of their homes

into a giant Advent Crown.

A jolly house covered in
electric lights may be expensive

and use a lot of power,

but it's the perfect way to cheer up
a world worried about climate change

and dwindling resources.

Of course,
in Queen Victorian times,

only the super rich
had fancy decorations.

Ordinary, poor people
had to celebrate Christmas

by coughing and counting
their surviving offspring.

Life in Queen Victorian
times was hard.

The streets were full of urchins
and rippers, and there was so much

poverty that people used to go
to prison just to get some bread.

But there was one man who cared

the greatest prime minister Britain
ever had Sir Charles Dickings.

Charles Dickings wanted people to
be generous to those in greater

need, like the poor,
the homeless or the dead,

so he wrote something
called A Christmas Carol,

which was something
called a book.

As seen in this powerful
and evocative adaptation,

A Christmas Carol is
about Ebenezer Scrooge,

a character almost as fully realised
as Disney's superior Scrooge McDuck.

Unlike Scrooge McDuck,
he's human.

And unlike most humans,
he hates Christmas.

But then,
in a terrifying development,

he starts getting
visited by ghosts,

like his house is built on some
sort of Indian burial ground.

The ghosts take him forward
and backwards in time to see different

Christmases, like that thing on
Facebook that shows you old haircuts

and people you don't
talk to anymore.

One ghost shows him the future,
but it's only by a year,

so it's still a
Victorian future.

As it is, he sees a future in which
everyone's delighted he's dead.

This convinces him that Christmas
is actually brilliant, which,

to be honest,
the ghost could have done

by giving him a Chocolate Orange
nobody can argue with that.

After the Victorian era, good
will to all men caught on so much

that it was almost 12 whole years
before everyone on the planet

decided to kill each
other in the mud.

Although it was scheduled
to be over by Christmas,

the war with Germany
lasted four years.

Mechanised conflict is
the most horrifying legacy

of the 20th century, as anyone
who's seen Robot Wars will agree.

But at Christmas 1914,
there was a brief ceasefire.

The fighting stopped.

Soldiers got out of their holes
and joined together in a place called

No Man's Land, showing that,
even at moments of peace,

men will still divide into two
sides and try to beat one another.

The Great War claimed over
17 million lives, making it the

worst incident of football-related
violence of all time.

After the First World War, Christmas
spirit once again reigned supreme,

until the Second World War.

We don't know if Christmas
happened during Second War Two

because there simply
aren't any records.

But there's no footage of Hitler
or Churchill in Santa hats either,

so it's safe to assume it was parked
while they twatted each other.

Once Hitler had defeated the Nazis
by blowing his own brains out,

Christmas returned with a bang

and a second period
of food-loving indulgence dawned.

The modern Christmas dinner
soon became an important

cultural cornerstone of both
society and gravy adverts.

Mum made the gravy.

Could you talk me through what
makes a perfect Christmas dinner?

Once you've got the right
people round the table,

you need a light starter.

- If you give people too much...
- Not prawn cocktails?

No... Well, I don't know. A good
prawn cocktail is a lovely thing.

- I don't like prawns.
- Do you not?

No, they're bottom feeders.

OK, I tend to do platters
of charcuterie, salami and ham,

and maybe some pickles
and things for people to pick up.

- I won't have that.
- You wouldn't have that? No? OK.

And then you come
to the main event,

so maybe a three-bird
roast or a roast goose

- bread sauce, gravy.
- But I don't understand bread sauce.

It's a great way of making
a really savoury sauce.

Bread and sauce are two completely
different things, aren't they?

Well, they are,
but you can grind the bread down

and then cook it in milk to
make a really good sauce.

It just looks like, sort of...
jizz.

Thanks to all this
food-based indulgence,

scientists now believe that 80%
of all burps occur at Christmas,

threatening to put a hole in the
oz-one layer at precisely the

moment the sky is full
of vulnerable reindeer.

Eating aside, the other popular
form of Christmas indulgence

is gift-buying from shops.

Critics say Christmas
is too commercialised

and that the Bible has being
replaced by the Argos catalogue,

just because it's got a better
selection of hair straighteners.

Recently, Christmas shopping
has started to look less like a

Supermarket Sweep
Christmas special

and more like a civil
war with carrier bags.

No wonder more people than ever stay
indoors shopping on the computer.

So, is Christmas all just
about buying stuff these days?

How much money
gets made at Christmas?

Altogether, I'm sure we spend hundreds
of millions of pounds at Christmas.

And how big a cut
does the Church get?

The Church doesn't get anything.

- They don't get anything?
- No. No.

The supermarket near
me has got about 30 tills.

How many tills does Amazon have?

They must have loads.

- They don't have any tills.
- What?

They have a computer.

- One computer?
- Yeah.

Because no-one goes there.
They just...

I know, but I thought they still
had to ring it through.

No, the computer does all that.

So there's one man at a
computer, just going...?

No, I don't think there's a man.

No, no, it just goes automatically.
You do that. You're the till.

Making money is so
important at Christmas

that shops pull out all the stops to fill the
screen with jolly images of buying things,

and their adverts have evolved
from cheerful animated catalogues

full of famous
people smiling at you

to heart-warming present-day mini
movies about infested trampolines.

Adverts aren't the only
programmes on at Christmas

there are also programmes
on at Christmas.

For decades, Christmas television
has been an enchanting place,

a magical land where people danced
and sang in a doomed attempt

to convey the sheer
magic of Christmas.

A time in which newsreaders
cavorted with comedians,

and real live snowmen
were gathered from the wild

and encouraged to sing their haunting
traditional songs in the studio.

But perhaps the most reassuring
Christmas programme is EastEnders,

which for years has provided
an important public service

by depicting worse families having
an even shitter time than yours.

You're lying!

- What are you doing?
- Bianca!

What are you doing?!

Films are a
mainstay at Christmas

and one familiar film is the
searing musical The Sound Of Music,

which is about a woman who sings
to hills about hills in the hills.

It's always on at Christmas,

probably because it's got nuns
in it so you think about Jesus.

And also Nazis,

so you think about The Great Escape,
which is probably on on Boxing Day.

But the most Christmassy film of all
time is also the most exciting,

Die Hard.

People think Die Hard is a
gripping and exciting action film,

just because,
as you can see, it is,

but it's also a
heart-warming Yuletide story

full of the magic of Christmas.

It's got everything...
'Singing...'

'a man up a chimney...'

Warming himself in
front of a roaring fire...

Shit!

'..while the snow
flutters down outside.'

Brotherly love...

'Hey, look, I love you...
'So do a lot of the other guys.'

..cranberry sauce,
excessive sherry drinking...

God,
that man looks really pissed.

..season's greetings...
Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.

..your dad conked out in a chair
wearing a Santa hat in his Christmas jumper,

angels majestically soaring
through the air and, of course,

Jesus Christ Powell.

Jesus Christ, Powell!

TV's becoming a thing of the olden
past, like sundials or ploughs,

because, today, everyone
has their own little screen,

so they can ignore their immediate
surroundings on an individual basis

instead of as part
of a collective effort.

We're often told to feel sorry for
those who are alone at Christmas,

but these days that's
all of us and it's brilliant.

Best of all,
this kind of technology

is set to become more
immersive than ever.

For instance,
this man from the year 2018

is enjoying a virtual
Christmas with a family

of characters from
the Nintendo universe.

Meanwhile, this man is experiencing
the true meaning of Christmas by

giving birth to a virtual baby
Jesus in a stable made of polygons.

Today, the true meaning
of Christmas is a mystery,

wrapped up in sherry
and Monopoly and monkey nuts,

but at least, at this time
of togetherness and warmth,

we can all agree what the
true spirit of Christmas is...

Baileys.

Merry Christmas
and a very New Year.