The traditional festive fare comes liberally served up by the BBC in Christmas week, including the annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge (Radio 4, 24 December, 3 p.m.). There are also the equally traditional variations on an eternal theme, which this year includes Patrick Barham’s comedy drama Star Child (Radio 4, 25 December, 4 p.m.), an updating of the march to Bethlehem featuring a magical star, a lonely seamstress, assorted wise women (a nice touch) and Jim Broadbent and Maggie Steed in the principal parts.

In the era of Black Lives Matter, Heart and Soul: Black Jesus (World Service, 20 December, 10.30 a.m) wears its timeliness like a hi-vis jacket. As the theologian Robert Beckford points out in this wide-ranging documentary, seeing Jesus as a dark-skinned Palestinian rather than the blonde European of a thousand Renaissance paintings is not a radical idea, but the turmoil of the past year’s racial protests have given it a whole new impetus.