SUNDAY, DEC. 24

Celebrating Light and Hope

ABC, check local listings

Some ABC affiliates will air this Catholic Communication Campaign special of Scripture readings, carols and a homily by Archbishop Timothy Dolan in Milwaukee’s Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist.

Choral Meditations & Solemn Mass

EWTN, 10 p.m.

Hear carols and witness Christmas Eve Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

Christmas Tech

History Channel, 8 p.m.

Find out where your Christmas tree comes from, along with tinsel, Christmas lights and fruitcake; and watch department stores design their Christmas window displays.

Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey

Familyland TV

On Christmas Day at 7:30 a.m. and Tuesday at 2:30 p.m., enjoy this 1977 animated story of a can’t-do-anything-right donkey who is kicked out by his owner and wanders alone but eventually finds out that God has a plan and purpose for him: to bear Mary, the Mother of Christ, to the stable in Bethlehem and warm her with his long ears.

Emperors of the Ice

PBS, 8 p.m.

Scientists in Antarctica attach lightweight “crittercams” to emperor penguins to watch what the penguins see, and do, as they swim under the Ross Ice Shelf.

Best-Loved

Christmas Carols

EWTN, 6:30 p.m.

Sing and pray along with these beloved hymns.

Holy Families, Holy Priests

EWTN

At 10 p.m. and midnight Sunday and at 8 a.m., 9 a.m., 6:30 p.m. and midnight Monday, this hour-long program shows us vocations to the priesthood germinating in the home.

Great Performances:

The New Year’s Celebration 2007

PBS, 9 p.m.

Zubin Mehta will conduct the Vienna Philharmonic at the Musikverein in Johann Strauss’s “The Blue Danube” and other classic pieces.

The Road up to the

Kolyma River

EWTN, 3:30 a.m.

“Kolyma means death,” said people in the Soviet Union about the atheistic communists’ dreaded complex of more than 100 slave labor camps in the Kolyma River region of desolate and frigid northeastern Siberia. Millions of prisoners of conscience died there, and survivors tell stories of faith and heroism under brutal persecution.

Dan Engler writes from

Santa Barbara, California.