Few things capture Christmas as well as poetry, and many have become standard, including ones whose verses became carols too.

Contents:

Preparations
1. Clement Moore: ’Twas the Night before Christmas (A Visit from  St Nicholas)
- Basil Rathbone
2. Robert Frost: Stopping by Woods
- Robert Frost
3. Robert Frost: Dust of Snow
- Robert Frost
4. Eugene Field: When Santa Claus Comes
- Jonathan Jones
5. John Betjeman: Christmas
- Alec Guinness
6. E.E. Cummings: Little Tree
- Jonathan Jones

Seasonal Regrets
7. Emily Dickinson: ’Twas just this time last year I died
- Annette Daniels Taylor
8. Alfred Lord Tennyson: Ring out Wild Bells! (Canto CVI from In Memoriam A.H.H)
- Jonathan Jones
9. Jill Furse: Carol
- Robert Donat
10. Henry W. Longfellow: Christmas Bells
- Jonathan Jones

Celebrations & Mythology
11. Edgar Guest: At Christmas
- Jonathan Jones
12. Theodore Watts-Dunton: Wassail Chorus at the Mermaid Tavern
- Robert Donat
13. William Wordsworth: Minstrels
- Jonathan Jones
14. Walter de la Mare: Mistletoe
- Jonathan Jones
15. Cecil Day-Lewis: The Christmas Tree
- Cecil Day-Lewis
16. John Mason Neale: Good King Wenceslas
- Jonathan Jones

Christmas Scenes
17. Shakespeare: When Icycles Hang
- Claire Bloom
18. William Wordsworth: A Boisterous Winter Evening
- Alec Clunes
19. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Frost at Midnight
- Richard Burton & Dulcie Gray
20. Laurie Lee: Christmas Landscape
- Jonathan Jones
21. Thomas Hardy: Snow in the Suburbs
- Carleton Hobbs
22. James Stephens: Donnybrook
- Lewis Jones
23. Odette Tchernine: The Snow
- Dulcie Gray

Biblical
24. Hilaire Belloc: Noel
- Robert Donat
25. Sara Teasdale: Christmas Carol
- Jonathan Jones
26. T.S. Eliot: Journey of the Magi
- Alec Guinness
27. Thomas Hardy: The Oxen
- Robert Donat
28. Christina Rosetti: In the Bleak Midwinter
- Jonathan Jones
29. John Alexander Chapman: Christus natus est
- Robert Donat
30. Anon.: Cherry Tree Carol
- Alec Guinness
31. Anon.: I Syng of a Mayden (‘Early Carol’)
- Robert Donat
32. St Francis of Assisi: Prayer
- Robert Donat

Prose & New Year
33. Dylan Thomas: A Child’s Christmas in Wales
- Dylan Thomas
34. Robert Burns: Auld Lang Syne
- Frederick Worlock