After that, the best you can hope for is a Christmas special of a favourite comedy or drama series.

The pick of the 'event' shows this year was Bachelors Walk, although it was probably a small enough audience that regarded it as an 'event'. Those who followed BW 's two series . . . about the adventures of three house-sharing twentysomething friends, Ray, Michael and Barry, in a Woody Allen-ised early-2000s Dublin . . . were devoted to it, though. There were many good things about Bachelors Walk, but what was best about it was how well it captured the sense of living in a city that seemed in the midst of some belle epoque, and having just a little bit of money in your pocket, and feeling like your whole life was ahead, and the confidence that comes with the mix of all those factors.

When we re-join the lads a few years on, they're that bit older, and their lives aren't so much in standstill as in reverse, and they're basically going through the same feelings as experienced by lots of fellas in their mid-30s who think they can fart around being bohemian while the rest of the world is careering ahead and the bio-clocks of women around them are ticking away.

Previous series of Bachelors Walk, if memory serves, ended unhappily, while somehow managing to remain 'feelgood'. Now, as an homage to the idealised optimism of Hollywood Christmases, rather than in keeping with the bittersweetness of old episodes of BW, we got a fairytale ending. It was ridiculous, of course. But in the context of the breezy, off-kilter world that Bachelors Walk creates for itself, it worked perfectly, and this was a special special, from the first moment to the last.

A highlight of Christmas Eve was Peter and the Wolf, a stopmotion animated version of Prokofiev's children's classic, marking its 70th anniversary.

Nothing too radical was done here . . . the music was stirring and brilliant, and the story was still set in Russia, albeit a noticeably modern Russia of idle towns and concrete outlet pipes dribbling waste into frozen lakes. And, for all its magical qualities, you still got that dark sense of unease you always get with these fables that were essentially devised to scare the bejaysus out of kids.

Very Christmassy too, but less disturbing, was If It's Spiced Beeff It's Chrismas In Cork, which examined the living traditions that make Christmas in the People's Republic unique. The programme interviewed, among others, regular pantomime dame Billa O'Connell, who must be the world's only non-camp professional crossdresser. And of course, there was a very evocative description of how spiced beef is made, which was lovely stuff, genuinely.

Playing Ebenezer this season, on It Started With Swap Shop, was Noel Edmonds. "What you are about to see does not exist in the BBC archives, " he said, introducing a viewer's VHS recording of an item on '70s kids show MultiColoured Swap Shop. "A lot of really great stuff was lost, in fact."

Edmonds, TV's most fractious, bitter man (despite a showbiz rebirth of sorts this year on Channel 4), and the nearest thing the real world has to Alan Partridge, obviously feels he has some bones to pick with his erstwhile employer after being shafted in the mid-'90s.

Christmas, lest we forget, is a time to remember those who have departed from us . . . like those stinking rich billionaires who live in tax exile and made up the top positions in Ireland's Richest List, presented by Craig Doyle, intolerably smug as usual. That might seem like an obvious thing to say about Craig Doyle, but then Craig Doyle is a fan of the obvious. "To be this successful, " he said, referring to the top 12 on the list, "you need nerves of steel and an ego bigger than mine." God . . . there's nothing worse than false self-deprecation.

The big surpise of the final countdown was that the number one position was occupied by someone that nobody's ever heard of . . . a woman called Hilary Weston, who lives in Canada, and who was described in the programme as the nearest thing that Canada has to royalty. Clearly no one involved in the show had looked at Canadian coinage or stamps recently.

Mass For Christmas Day this year came from St Peter's Church, Phibsborough, Dublin. (Prods were given Christmas Day Service, earlier in the morning, the gluttons for punishment that they are. ) At the risk of sounding patronising, it looked like a great occasion, with people from all over the world in the congregation, representing Ireland's now ethnically diverse society. Musical proceedings were led by a Spanish-influenced Filipino choir, an African band with a sort of reggae thing going on, and some Indian dancers who swayed up the aisle in a suggestive manner to a synthesised dance beat pumping out from the PA. Faith and begorrah it was not.

Reviewed Bachelors Walk St Stephen's Day, RTE Two Peter and the Wolf Christmas Eve, Channel 4 If It's Spiced Beef. . . It Must Be Cork Christmas Eve, RTE One It Started With Swap Shop Thursday, BBC2 Ireland's Richest List Wednesday, RTE One Mass For Christmas Day Christmas Day, RTE One