Dr Paul Chambers, a sociologist of religion, explores the various meanings that people apply to Christmas including its commercialisation, its secularisation and how Christmas allows us to celebrate and reaffirm our relations with others.

Award-winning poet Professor Philip Gross teaches creative writing at the University of Glamorgan. In this Christmas Lecture, he reads his new Christmas poem, which was inspired by the medieval Waits — the village musicians who came out on Christmas Eve, long before carol singing became a family occupation.

Dr. Paul Roche is an astronomer in the Division of Earth, Space and Environment. In this Christmas Lecture, he talks about the Star of Bethlehem which appears the Nativity story, and examines what this object might have been — or if it existed at all.

Award-winning poet Professor Philip Gross reads his translation of the poem that appears around the foot of the giant Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square. He was approached by the Poetry Society and the Norwegian Embassy to do a new translation of this poem by Nordahl Grieg, the Norwegian writer who died as a war correspondent in 1943. This poem is both a love poem to Grieg's wife Gerd and an evocation of peace and the natural landscape.

In Roman mythology, Janus is the two-faced god of beginnings and endings. It's apropos as an image for the property market which, at this time of year, looks back at the past year and forward. Owain Llywelyn, the former chair of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors Wales, looks at what we can expect from the housing market in 2011 and beyond.

Professor Andrew Smith teaches English and gothic studies at the University of Glamorgan. In this Christmas Lecture, with reference to Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’, he talks on how a Victorian Christmas was focused on family and charity, rather than religion.

Dr Fiona Reid is an historian. In this Christmas Lecture, she looks at the first Christmas for displaced people and refugees following the Second World War.