Plot Synopsis

Smithsonian Channel combined Christmas episodes from the British series into a single series airing as INSIDE THE CHRISTMAS FACTORY. In these special episodes, Gregg Wallace, Cherry Healey, and Ruth Goodman spread holiday cheer and give an inside look at the creation of classic Christmas delicacies, decorations and desserts.

"Mince Pies": In this Christmas special, Gregg Wallace, Cherry Healey and Ruth Goodman explore the fascinating factory processes and surprising history behind favorite festive treats. Gregg follows 24 hours of production at the world's largest mince pie factory. As he helps to mix pastry and stew mince, Gregg discovers the challenges of producing 2,000 perfect pies every minute. He also attempts to roll the sponge on the yule log conveyor belt -- with disastrous results. Cherry travels to south Wales to meet the workers who make enough tinsel in a year to reach Hawaii, and she is given special access to a high-tech factory that produces over 400 million meters of best-selling wrapping paper. Meanwhile, Ruth Goodman discovers the explosive history of Christmas crackers. Aired as Christmas 2016 in the UK.

"Christmas Cakes": In this Christmas special, Gregg Wallace, Cherry Healey and Ruth Goodman explore the fascinating factory processes and surprising history behind favorite festive treats. Gregg follows 24 hours of production at a cake factory in Oldham, near Manchester, where they make two million Christmas cakes for Marks and Spencer. As he helps to mix dried fruit and spices, Gregg discovers the challenges of producing 480 perfect cakes every hour. He also attempts to prepare some of the 300,000 handmade decorations made from 150,000 tonnes of icing sugar, with very messy results. Meanwhile, Cherry is given special access to Britain's largest marzipan factory, which produces two thousand tonnes of almond paste every year, and visits one of our largest sprout farms where, during the two weeks before Christmas, they pick 190 million sprouts. She also travels to Somerset to discover how 80,000 bottles of brandy are distilled from cider apples and gets hot under the collar attempting to blow a glass Christmas bauble. Ruth Goodman adds her own Christmas revelations by investigating how early industrial heritage inspired Charles Dickens to write A Christmas Carol, and why Christmas tree lights are called fairy lights. Aired as Christmas 2017 in the UK.

"Chocolate Assortments": In this Christmas special, Gregg Wallace visits a factory which produces a staggering two million tins of festive chocolate assortments a year. At materials intake he receives 20 tonnes of liquid chocolate at 50 degrees Celsius. This is used in 10 of the 12 sweets in the tin. Everyone has their favorite (for Gregg it's the purple-wrapped caramel-coated hazelnut) and he follows the supersized batches of the toffee, orange and strawberry varieties on their journey from tanker to tin. In just one hour 800 kilos of toffee is cut into precise 10mm x 55 mm sticks before they disappear under a chocolate waterfall. Meanwhile the orange centers make an epic 45-minute journey along 400 meters of conveyors. And 115,000 strawberry fondants head into wrapping, where 5,500 individual chocolates are packaged and dropped into tins every minute, ready to put color into Christmas across the UK. Meanwhile Cherry Healey is producing other festive treats. She travels to Germany -- the home of so many of our Christmas traditions -- where she joins a crew of 35 ornament decorators, applying glitter and paint to an army of glass Santas. In the UK, she goes behind the scenes at the Royal Mail as the Christmas stamps are printed. They'll grace the envelopes of around one billion cards this year. She also learns some tricks for perfecting gingerbread, but rather than a house, she produces a gingerbread factory complete with biscuit versions of her co-presenters. She's even got your Boxing Day leftovers sorted, bottling up 250 jars of spiced Christmas chutney. Historian Ruth Goodman is on the trail of the Christmas turkey. It's a tradition that begins way back in the 16th century when these birds were first introduced from Mexico. But at the equivalent of 450 pounds per bird, only the richest could afford them. It wasn't until the 1950s that selective breeding made them truly affordable for the masses. And this year we'll tuck into ten million of them. She also comes face to face with the precursor to the pantomime dame -- an 18th century clown -- and discovers that slapstick comedy is so-called because of a stick that was slapped together to indicate that the funny bit was coming up.

"Party Food": Gregg Wallace heads to Nottingham to a factory that makes 200,000 canapes every 24 hours. He discovers the secrets of creating party food on a grand scale as he follows production of mini-quiche bites and vol-au-vents. It begins with a tonne of egg -- 20,000 individual eggs -- which are whisked into a custardy filling. 283kg of bacon and 800kg of cheese transform this mix into quiche lorraine. This round-the-clock operation requires 600 staff in the run-up to Christmas, since 85 per cent of their annual production is made and dispatched in December. Meanwhile, Cherry Healey discovers fail-safe scientific methods for cooking the perfect turkey. This year, she is turning her oven into a turkey sauna by popping ice cubes into a baking tray. The hot steam keeps her bird succulent, and a coating of alkaline baking powder speeds up the browning reaction, ensuring a beautifully bronzed bird. She also heads to Wiltshire to a traditional candle makers. She learns the ancient technique of hand-dipping, laying down a 0.7mm thick layer of wax around a wick. It takes 16 dips to create a half-inch-wide candle. Historian Ruth Goodman finds that, while bringing mistletoe inside at Christmas time goes right back to pagan times, the tradition of kissing beneath it is much more recent. The earliest record she finds is a song from 1784, where it seems it began in the servants' hall, making the most of the topsy-turvy norms of the festive period. Ruth also investigates how the period of Advent, traditionally associated with fasting, came to be connected with chocolate-packed calendars.

"Christmas Cards": Gregg Wallace visits the Woodmansterne card factory in in Watford. It's one of the largest greeting card companies in the UK, a family business sending out 35 million cards a year. He gets stuck into all aspects of the card creation process -- from sketching a card design, to creating an aluminium plate for the printing process, to the guillotining of the sheets into cards and the final shipping process, which takes the cards as far afield as Australia and Singapore. Meanwhile, Cherry Healey creates a vegan Christmas feast, and historian Ruth Goodman unwraps the story of the year when Christmas was cancelled.