A nostalgic journey back through the archives to the Christmasses of the seventies and eighties, when Santa Claus was instructed to deliver Tonka cars and Barbie dolls to millions of expectant, excited children, afternoons were spent gripped in front of the TV for the likes of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Snowman, and music of the era featured everything from Phil Spector to Greg Lake.
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(A compilation of highlights from the series I Love the Eighties is showing on New Year's Eve at 8 pm. I Love 1972 is tonight at 10.45 pm)

The real toy story is told when BBC2 unwraps a fun-filled look at festive fads and popular children's presents of the past

I Love Christmas 8.30pm BBC2
You know how life dogs you with vague disappointments? You can't actually put a name to what is wrong, or why it has been wrong for years, but there's something that's never been quite right, all the same.
So will there, perhaps, be other women in the land (or even men, let's not be sexist about this) who, after watching I love Christmas, can free themselves at last from this yoke of unspoken despair... who can at last stand up and say with confidence that their life went wrong because they never received a Girl's World for Christmas?
Maybe you have never realised quite how much you wanted one. It was a sublime and wonderful thing, a big plastic doll's head (and just the head, so it looked like something out of a camp version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers) with very long blonde plastic hair. Hair that you could comb again and again.
The joys of Girl's World and other super kitsch desirables are thoroughly explored in this jolly programme, which looks at how we have celebrated Christmas and at the toys that found their way into Santa's sack down the decades. Ron Atkinson and Terry Wogan talk passionately about Subbuteo, while Barbie inventor Ruth Handler discusses her splendid creation.
There's an examination, too, of the Santa's grottoes that dotted suburban high streets. And I Love Christmas probes the mystery of why, if there was only one Santa, there were so many versions. I certainly never understood how there could be so many Father Christmasses in Middlesbrough. But perhaps we were just particularly blessed. (Alison Graham)