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Thinking Allowed: Class at Christmas

22/12/2010

Class at Christmas

BBC Radio 4 - Thinking Allowed, Class at Christmas

Laurie Taylor explores Christmas, compassion and class, from the Victorian era to today.

Dickens saw Christmas as the one time when the rich and poor united in a spirt of shared humanity. But Laurie Taylor asks if that is any truer today than it was in Victorian times.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, children gathered beneath a sparking tree, a table groaning with turkey.....the cliches of the season are as alive and well as they were in Dickens time. But does everybody have equal access to the bounty of Christmas and the good will of others? The geographer, Steve Millington, finds that the distaste some middle class people feel for 'excessive' displays of xmas lights in working class areas reveals a narrative of class hostility which echoes Victorian attitudes to the 'undeserving' poor. He joins Laurie Taylor, the sociologist Bev Skeggs and the historian Julie Marie Strange to explore Christmas, compassion and class, then and now.
Producer: Jayne Egerton.

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