All Times Eastern

SUNDAY, 8 p.m.

A Christmas Carol

TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES This Christmas classic from 1938, directed by Edwin L. Marin, faithfully follows Charles Dickens’ story, set in London in 1843, in which miserly Ebenezer Scrooge fires his clerk Bob Cratchit on Christmas Eve, then repents and makes amends to the Cratchits — but only after visits from his deceased partner Marley and the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future set him straight.

MONDAY, 9 p.m.

Explorer: Mammoth Mystery

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL Investigators team up to analyze clues into why the mammoths of North America seem to have vanished suddenly in about 11,000 B.C.

TUESDAY, 8 p.m.

How Green Was My Valley

TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES In this 1941 masterpiece directed by John Ford, a Welsh coal-mining family preserves its love, faith and courage in the face of tragedies and economic hardship. Donald Crisp, Maureen O’Hara, Anna Lee and Roddy McDowall star.

WEDNESDAY, 10 p.m.

Our Lady of Guadalupe and Miraculous Mexico

EWTN Canadian Ukrainian Catholic Bishop Roman Danylak and fellow pilgrims travel to Mexico to visit the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City and the shrines of Our Lady of Ocatlan and San Miguel del Milagro, both in Tlaxcala.

THURSDAY, 8 p.m.

Life on the Rock

EWTN Guest Imelda Paul discusses the suffering Church in China.

THURSDAY, 10 p.m.

Craft in America

PBS This first episode in a series on American craft artisans takes us to visit woodworker Sam Maloof, furniture maker Garry Knox Bennett, metalsmith Tom Joyce and basket makers Mary Jackson and Pat Courtney Gold. A re-air.

FRIDAYS IN DEC., 10 p.m.

Walking the Bible

PBS In the first episode of this three-part series on Biblical sites, author Bruce Feiler and archaeologist Avner Goren travel to the Tigris and Euphrates, Mount Ararat and the ruins of Harran in Turkey, to the Dead Sea and to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Parts 2 and 3, Dec. 21 and 28, take us to Luxor and the Valley of the Kings in Egypt and then to St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai, to Petra and to Mount Nebo.

SATURDAY, 12:30 p.m.

3 Godfathers

TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES John Ford directed this moving 1948 “Christmas Western” in which outlaws on the run — Pedro Armendariz, Harry Carey Jr. and John Wayne — abandon their flight after promising a dying mother they will get her newborn son to safety.

Dan Engler writes from
Santa Barbara, California.