23 DECEMBER 1949, Page 15

Carols and Parties

This week ends, on its top note, with the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, from King's College, Cambridge. "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," cried those March girls,. and the B.B.C. Christmas wouldn't be itself without these carols. But the various B.B.C. departments have all joined in. Mr. Pickles deals with the old folks at a Christmas party ; Mr. Lionel Gamlin with the young ones in a holiday Hullo, Children Some old theatrical war-horse is dug out of retirement to talk to the ladies about pantomime. Even the Third Programme, which usually turns a cold eye on topicality, joins in with Berlioz's Childhood of Christ and (on Christmas Eve) with Schutz's Historia von der Gebur► Jesu Christi.