It is an oddity of English football that while league matches were banned on Sundays up to 1974, people were regularly allowed to go to a game on Christmas Day until 1965. It was a public holiday and live televised matches were rare, so many people welcomed having an excuse to escape their families.
In 1888, Everton played twice on Christmas Day, beating Blackburn Park Road in a Lancashire Cup tie in the morning and then winning a friendly against Ulster after lunch. Arsenal were forbidden from hosting home matches on Christmas Day until 1925, when they bought the lease on Highbury from St John’s College of Divinity.
If it’s festive football you want now, it will have to be the American kind. The Washington Commanders host the Dallas Cowboys in the first NFL game on Christmas Day, followed by the Minnesota Vikings against the Detroit Lions (Thursday, Netflix, 6pm and 9.30pm).
There is proper football on Christmas Eve, including Cameroon against Gabon in the Africa Cup of Nations (Wednesday, All 4, 8pm). That begins today with Morocco v Comoros (E4, 7pm). The Boxing Day matches in England start with a mid-table Championship tie – Birmingham City v Derby County (Friday, Sky Sports Main, 12.30pm) – but the only Premier League game is Manchester United v Newcastle United (Sky Sports Main, 8pm).
If you’d prefer a cosy football film, two use a match as cover for a prison break: Escape to Victory is on Apple, while Porridge is on the BBC iPlayer.
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This year’s equivalent of Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone playing football on the same team as Pele and Bobby Moore, as they do in Escape to Victory, may be F1, in which Brad Pitt, playing an ageing driver returning for one last grand prix, races against Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc (Apple TV).
Because of the time difference, the fourth Ashes Test starts before Boxing Day (Thursday, TNT Sports 1, 11.30pm). England once won a Test at Christmas: on December 25, 1972, Tony Lewis and Tony Greig added the 100 runs needed to beat India in Delhi. It was the last of four Tests on Christmas Day local time, with all the other three involving Australia. Will their successors produce turkeys or plums?
The King George VI Chase has been held at Kempton almost every Boxing Day since 1947. Frost led it to be cancelled or postponed seven times, most recently in 2010 when Long Run’s victory two weeks later interrupted Kauto Star’s run of five wins, while foot-and-mouth disease stopped the 1967 race. Gaelic Warrior has his nose in front with the bookies this year (Friday, ITV1, 2.30pm). Carrots all round afterwards.
Photograph by Scott Barbour/Getty Images