'All Creatures Great & Small' 2025 Christmas Special Brings "Comfort & Joy"

The 2025 Christmas Special of All Creatures Great & Small finds the inhabitants of Skeldale House hard at work. Audrey is in the process of negotiating a turkey, because if she doesn’t get the real thing, the household will dine on the government-suggested Murkey*. Jimmy is practicing his role as the Angel Gabriel for the town nativity play, but mispronounces “Heaven” as “Hebden” (the name of a nearby town). 

(*“Murkey” was a real mock turkey of moulded sausage meat with parsnips masquerading as legs. Wartime food was very enthusiastic about root vegetables.)

Siegfried escapes the chaos to reacquaint himself with Mrs. Stokes’s goat Hilda, who ate part of a neighbor’s laurel wreath, which is poisonous to goats. Siegfried finds no obvious symptoms and winds up dosing Hilda with tea because the tannin should help; the humans enjoy some brandy. They compare notes on how they’ll spend the big day – Mrs. Stokes is having a “Farmer’s Christmas” (slang for a normal day), whereas Siegfried will be hosting a houseful of the usual suspects. A crowded house at Christmas isn’t something that can be counted on indefinitely, Mrs. Stokes warns him; he should get married. As she’s scolding him, Hilda decides to have other ideas, escaping from her barn through a broken door.