This Christmas in front of the television could be worryingly energetic.

My daughter is threatening to bring round one of those Wii contraptions, which allows you to play tennis, golf, bowl and even box in the comfort of your own living room.

But why? The most exercise I've ever had on a Christmas Day is wrestling with the crumbling cork on a wine bottle or trying (and failing) to crack open brazil nuts. Incidentally, I now let somebody else do the dirty work and buy them covered in chocolate instead.

But the Wii is conclusive evidence that the television set has long since ceased to be the focal point of the living room around which the entire family used to gather over the festive season.

It now insists on being interactive and you have to feed it with your physical effort and brain power in order to get something back.

This is not what Christmas Days are supposed to be for.

Yet it is just the latest phase in the evolution undergone by Christmas and television over the years.

As a kid in the 1950s, festive television was a novelty for the simple reason that for one day a year you had continuous broadcasting from morning until night.

In those black and white times, there was nothing on in the morning, little but a few children's programmes in the afternoon and then the BBC was closed down for an hour at tea-time to allow parents time to get their children to bed.

Nowadays they can be found congregating outside Spar shops (the kids that is, not the parents) spitting on the pavement and hiding their faces with hoods.

But to have access to television programmes for a whole day was a privilege that must seem laughable now to a generation brought up on the multi-channel, record-as-you-go facilities which now prevail.

Apart from carol services, there was little by way of special Christmas programming in the 1950s.

That didn't really begin until the mid to late 1960s, and then it was all rather half-hearted.

Whether by accident or design, the advent of colour in 1968 seemed to remind planners they had a captive (if somewhat somnolent) audience to impress or entertain – and it was looking for something more imaginative than a few carols and a Nativity play.

Piece by piece, the Christmas television jigsaw began to be put in place.

Some of it was good, some was appalling, but, rather like eating your sprouts with your turkey, you felt obliged to consume it all.

One of the most maudlin concepts was the Christmas morning visit to a children's ward.

The onslaught was led initially by Leslie Crowther – the host of Crackerjack and therefore the most famous children's entertainer of his generation.

I can still see the fearful looks on the face of ailing youngsters, while they slowly slid beneath the sheets as Crowther approached their beds.

With his gleaming teeth and unfeasibly black hair glistening in the arc lights, he must have been a fearsome prospect as the kids lay there with their appendix scars throbbing.

We all know what it's like to be marooned in a hospital ward with an unwelcome visitor munching away at your grapes.

Imagine, if you will, the distress of these kids. It was bad enough having to spend Christmas away from home without this weird bloke beaming and cackling at your bedside. Crowther's mantle was later taken on by several other masters of enforced jollity, including Rolf Harris and Noel Edmonds. There really was no respite for poorly children in those days.

Edmonds (as is his wont) then developed his own variation on the theme and Christmas mornings were spent watching him dispense spectacular gifts and reuniting long-lost relatives at a time when Australia was regarded as being at the other end of the universe.

Top of the Pops eventually occupied the early-afternoon slot on Christmas Day, and this annual review of all the number one records (or "discs" as we trendy young things referred to them at the time) was presided over by Jimmy Savile, Alan Freeman, David Jacobs and Pete Murray.

In those days, while the BBC was prepared to produce a few programmes primarily for the young, they always played safe by putting them in the hands of middle-aged presenters.

They still do. Unfortunately one of the middle-aged men now involved is Jonathan Ross, so it does not always have the desired effect.

The Queen's message has been broadcast at 3pm on Christmas Day for well over 40 years. In most houses it was something grandmothers watched with faces aglow, and through which grandfathers slept.

In 1969 it was replaced for that year only by The Royal Family, the first fly-on-the-wall programme to feature the monarchy.

The highlight remains the venomous look on Princess Anne's face – and her barking reproof – as her two younger brothers messed around with the Christmas tree decorations. Even then the message came over loud and clear – you cross me at your peril.

Pre-tea entertainment usually featured a circus, a montage of clips from Disney films or a one-off panto in which stars pranced self-consciously about the place in tights and spouted lines which fell like dust from their lips.

It was from early evening onwards that the schedules began to assume a shape recognised by everyone over the age of 45 as the golden era of Christmas programming.

To coin a phrase, it may have glistered but it wasn't always real gold.
The shows by Morecambe and Wise and the Two Ronnies were masterpieces, to such a degree that if either were to be repeated at 8pm this Christmas evening they would probably receive the highest viewing figures of the day.

The Only Fools And Horses specials will always have an enduring appeal, and deservedly so, but who remembers dire compilations like Christmas Night with the Stars?

This was a mish-mash of 10-minute sketches from successful comedy shows of the time. Most were recorded in August and seemed to have been knocked out by their writers after a long, bibulous lunch.

Ask anyone to recall a sketch from a Morecambe and Wise show and you will be knocked over in the rush.

Never ask anyone the same question about Christmas Night with the Stars. The tumbleweed will roll down the empty streets of memory, and you will be waiting until the following Christmas for a reply.

Eventually both BBC and ITV stopped bothering with special festive shows and instead resorted to the soaps to provide the bulk of the evening's entertainment.

From the point of view of attracting large audiences, it was a shrewd move.

The 1986 edition of EastEnders, in which Den told Angie he wanted a divorce, was witnessed by an astonishing 30 million people.

We will never see its like again, because audiences have been falling away steadily ever since. Only Fools attracted 24m people in 1996 and 10 years later the highest-rated programme was The Vicar of Dibley, for which only 11.4m tuned in.

This year, there will be about three hours of soaps and, more than ever before, games consoles, interactive DVD games and the dreaded Wii will continue to take their toll of our time and interest.

The gaudy, tinselled shows of yesteryear are no more. Like concertina paper-chains, a glass of port and lemon and carol singers who actually know the words, they are just a fragrant memory of the way Christmas used to be.

Read more in today's Echo