Ghosts of Christmas Past

Monday 15 November 2010

I know what some of you are probably thinking, right about now. Why the 'Chrismologist'? Surely someone who studies, or has a wide knowledge of, Christmas traditions should be the Christmologist or Christmasologist.

Well, when I was trying to settle on a name for this website I considered all three options carefully. The trouble with Christmologist is that it could be construed to mean someone who is an expert specifically on Jesus Christ, and Christmasologist felt too unwieldy. So I settled on Chrismologist.

But there was another reason why I went for this option. In 2008 I was involved in the recording of Dom and Danny Do Christmas, for Radio 5 Live. When they contacted my publisher's publicist to see if I would be interested in taking part, the email their producer sent said that they wanted a Chrismologist. And I was referred as such by Danny Wallace at the start of the show, which you can hear here.



If you would like to listen to the whole hour's worth of Dom and Danny Do Christmas, you can download it from here.

Just before we went on air, Dom Joly got out a singing, plastic Christmas tree, and when I was able to tell him what the first artificial trees were made from he turned to me in amazement and said, "You really do know everything about Christmas!" I obviously made an impression, because he mentioned me in his column in the Independent - sort of...

Then, last week I was recording my Radio Five Live Christmas day special and invited a man on who'd written a book called What is Myrrh Anyway? It turns out to be an "embalming ointment".

Ah... Fame at last!

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