"What's to-day, my fine fellow?"

Who's that knocking on the window, 
Who's that standing at the door, 
What are all those presents 
Laying on the kitchen floor? 

Who is the smiling stranger 
With hair as white as gin, 
What is he doing with the children 
And who could have let him in? 

Why has he rubies on his fingers, 
A cold, cold crown on his head, 
Why, when he caws his carol, 
Does the salty snow run red? 

Why does he ferry my fireside 
As a spider on a thread, 
His fingers made of fuses 
And his tongue of gingerbread? 

Why does the world before him 
Melt in a million suns, 
Why do his yellow, yearning eyes 
Burn like saffron buns? 

Watch where he comes walking 
Out of the Christmas flame, 
Dancing, double-talking: 

Herod is his name.

Weird, huh? I don't know how many mugs of mulled wine Charles Causley had scooped when he composed Innocents Song, blending Santa with King Herod's notorious Massacre of the Innocents from the New Testament. But there it is. A winter's tale, with just a hint of darkness against the twinkling candlelight. 

A little horror to leaven the jollity is traditional around Christmas. Dickens, inevitably, but also the atmospheric and otherworldly short stories M R James.  This year,  Mark Gatiss has adapted his Tractate Middoth for the BBC.  Youtube yields up other unsettling delights from the back-catalogue. 

Michael Hordern's splendidly detailed, greedy, mumbling professor in Whistle and I'll Come to You (1968) almost makes up for his appalling, emotionally-empty performance as Prospero in the BBC Shakespeare version of the Tempest.  And although the recording quality is a bit iffy, Number 13, masterfully but simply narrated by Christopher Lee, is fine unsettling stuff for the hour of the wolf, dram trembling in hand.

I hope it has been a good year, and my thanks to all the folk who've taken time to lend their lugs to our podcasts and to read this blog over the past twelve months. I hope both have been diverting.  As the Stygian gloom of a December afternoon draws in, all that remains is to wish you all, all of my readers, a very Merry Christmas tomorrow.

May Santa fill up all your coal scuttles to the brim.