You can get three months of The Spectator for just £15, plus a free bottle of Paul Roger champagne if you go to spectator.com.

UK forward slash phys24. This offer is UK-only and subject to part two of a very special Christmas edition of Spectator Out Loud.

Each week we choose some of our favourite pieces from the magazine and ask their writers to read them aloud.

I'm Patrick Gibbons and on this week's

podcast, Andrew Watts reveals what he learned at Santa school. Marcus Walker reads his priest's

notebook, which includes a surprising link between the spectator and Benjamin Franklin. Ali Kefford

spends Christmas on patrol with the Royal Navy Submariners. Roger Lewis says good riddance to 2024.

In a special version voiced by his friend, the actor Robert Bathurst,

Ian Hirsch-Ali argues that a Christian revival is underway.

And finally, Christopher Howes looks at the history of carols and says they're weirder than we might think.

Up first, Andrew Watts.

Whenever my son's primary school ring up,

they have very sensibly a calming form of words.

It's a school here, but don't worry, there's nothing wrong.

It became clear, however, that Mrs. Grubin had not thought through the rest of the conversation.

Our father Christmas has dropped out, and we thought of you because, Well... A few weeks later, I join a Santa Refresher course organised by Ministry of Fun, a company which supplies Father Christmases.

Should that be Father's Christmas, to department stores such as Selfridges and Hamleys.

As I walk into the London Transport Museum, a contract, this is the

correct collective noun for a group of clauses, I'm told, a contract of two dozen centres are

settling down at desks for a PowerPoint presentation by Matt Grist, who is much less annoying than

the managing director of a company called Ministry of Fun has any right to be. He starts with a brief

pep talk. What we do is remind people of the real meaning of Christmas, the non-religious meaning of

...