Christmas in the Carthy and Boden households is a serious business.

Comfort is sacrificed to ramming them chock-full of as much greenery / bling / tat as is humanly possible. Often our respective children are forced to camp outside for the duration so that their bedrooms can be given over to mechanical nodding reindeer, life size inflatable Santas and industrial mince pie production facilities.

Official carol-singing season chez Carthy and chez Boden is, of course, Sep 1st to Feb 1st and within that timeframe any other material is frowned upon.

There are some who believe that the full weight of the human need to mark the passing of the seasons with a series of regular customs throughout the year, has been overly focused in modern times upon the single folk custom of Christmas to the great detriment of the broader customary calendar and leading to the cultural overburdening of the Christmas ritual.

To this we say…. baubles. Bring it on. The more Christmas the better. In fact having launched (due to Covid rescheduling) our Christmas show in July at the Union Chapel Islington, we strongly urge the adoption of a second “hot” Christmas so that all artificial constraints can be removed and life can at last become one long Yuletide bonanza.

With this in mind we decided that we should try to translate our Christmas obsessions to disc form. We hope it may bring you much seasonal joy and festival merriment.