Woman's Hour - 25/12/2009

Christmas is the most hotly-anticipated time of the year for children, as the build-up to the big day brings forth parties, letters to Father Christmas and, hopefully, a big pile of presents. But today's children are, according to many, spoilt rotten and unable to appreciate the true meaning of Christmas. Is it true? One of the things we associate with Christmas is snow, despite the fact most of us rarely get it. In fact, with climate change, we can't be sure that snow will even be part of the future British climate. Future generations of children inspired by books like The Snowman may have to go abroad to experience the pleasures of a totally white landscape. Charlie English is the author of The Snow Tourist: A Search for the World's Purest Deepest Snowfall. Julia Eccleshare is Children's Fiction Editor for The Guardian. Both talk to Faith Lawrence about the pleasure they get from reading about snow and from experiencing it for the first time. Christmas is traditionally a time to get together with friends and family, but there's also an increasing desire to get away from it all and do something entirely differen. So how to make the best of what singer Andy Williams called 'the most wonderful time of the year'? And a reading from the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. She recites her own poem, December, published as part of an anthology that she has edited, called The Twelve Poems of Christmas.