TROUBLED economic times means that some people won’t be able to afford the kind of Christmas they’d really like.

Instead, they’re forced to cut corners and perhaps be as inventive as they can when it comes to creating something special for their families.

It could be argued that the financial circumstances this festive season are similar to those back in 1944, when Britain was about to celebrate its sixth Christmas Day of the Second World War.

But Wartime Christmas Farm recalls the fate of those fighting overseas and the constant threat of bombardment dampened the Christmas atmosphere. As a result, morale was low.

Historian Ruth Goodman and archaeologist Peter Ginn reveal in the programme how the nation’s farmers attempted to lift people’s spirits by keeping food production going. After the eightweek long Wartime Farm series, they’re returning to Manor Farm in Hampshire to recreate the conditions of Christmas 1944.

Farmers had already ploughed six-anda- half million additional acres in the drive for additional crops, after being told by the government that they ought to double home-grown food production.

The shortages saw many rural women join the one million-strong Women’s Voluntary Service to provide food, drink and generally serve to lift the nation’s spirits.

With Victorian Farm and Edwardian Farm, the BBC has found a winning format.

What does Goodman think is the secret to its success? “For some it’s about nostalgia, for others it shows them forgotten or half-remembered ways of dealing with things,” she says.

“Some people are interested in learning about a more simple life while others just want to laugh at the idiots with old-fashioned clothes on.”

She and Ginn also learn why the railway postal system transferred Airgrams to film, and they take a trip to one of London’s biggest air raid shelters where 15,000 people took refuge on Christmas Day 1944.