Deck the halls with boughs of holly, God rest ye merry gentlemen, We’re walking in the air...

It’s Chriiiiiissstmaaaaaaaaas!

Yes, the season of joy and good cheer is upon us once again and it’s gone all Dickensian in WCITJ Towers as Morgan Cratchitt and Rhianydd Scrooge meet once again over a thimbleful of eggnog to share a box of chocolate-covered sprouts and put the world to rights.

This Yuletide we ponder such timeless teasers as, is it better to give or to receive (quiet in the cheap seats!)? When’s the right time to open your pressies? And what’s the best Christmas song ever (clue - it’s not by bloody Cliff Richard!)?

We share some childhood Christmas memories and Rhianydd challenges Morgan with some frankly bizarre examples of 19th century Christmas cards. Think the Victorian Christmas was all about plum pudding and hot toddies? Think again!

And because Christmas is a time for giving we’re spoiling you with TWO Wenglish Words of the Week, and a couple of properly cultural cultural moments for your delight and delectation.

Nadolig Llawen pawb!

Follow Morgan James @morganjamesofficial

Music by James Biebrach

As winter draws in and we put our winter drawers on, Rhianydd and Morgan like to gather round the fire to tell each other stories that have been handed down for generations (or more likely we’ve just found on the interweb).

It’s an age-old human need, to banish the cold and dark with tales of long ago; tales of gods, monsters, princesses, knights in shining armour and bloody huge dogs with big sharp fangs that terrorise the life out of hapless travellers on the dark highway…

Cwtch up with us as we share our favourite stories, and prepare to shed a tear or two over one of Wales’s most famous - and heartbreaking - legends. You’ll probably need to console yourselves with a sherry and a mince pie or two, so go and crack a bottle open while we get comfy.

As well as tales we also have another wonderful Wenglish Word of the Week for you, and a poignant cultural moment.

Follow Morgan James @morganjamesofficial

Music by James Biebrach

Was life better B what? What are these whimsical Welsh wallies on about now?

Well, for the uninformed, ‘BI’ = Before Internet!

You’d have to be over thirty (or possibly even as old as Morgan and Rhianydd) to remember such halcyon days: days when if you wanted to find something out you had to … look in a book!; days when if you wanted to buy cinema tickets you had to … go and queue up!; days when if you had to drive somewhere you had to… (gasps)...read a bloody map!

We had patience! We had resourcefulness! We had critical thinking skills!

Think of what we miss out on now that we have the answers at our fingertips: whole nights in the pub arguing whether it was ‘Robert thingummy’ or ‘Al whatshisname’ in ‘that film’, and wait a minute ‘is he still alive anyway?’. Or the joys of waiting for the bus in the rain, wondering whether it would even turn up, with no way of finding out…

Hmmm. Maybe life BI wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be after all.

So yes, this week Morgan and Rhianydd debate the pros and cons of t’interweb, what we’ve lost and what we’ve gained. And what we would have done with it if it had been a thing in 1987 (nothing good in Rhianydd’s case, it turns out).

And no, the irony of the fact that we can only do this podcasting lark because of the world-wide-net, or whatever the young people are calling it these days, isn’t entirely lost on us.

There’s a pungent Wenglish Word of the Week, and if we can’t think of a cultural moment, we’ll just pop on chatgpt to help us out. No one will notice.

Follow Morgan James @morganjamesofficial

Music by James Biebrach