EACH Christmas, Barnsley folk angel Kate Rusby revives the South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire pub tradition of singing carols from Armistice Day to New Year's Day.

There have been 12 years of concerts, two albums and now a DVD, and every December Kate returns bearing new gifts, making an annual visit to her carolling, wassailing show a Christmas must.

Leeds Town Hall last Thursday was the nearest to York this year, its mighty organ hidden by Kate’s backdrop of giant snowflakes, as she entered carrying her obligatory Yorkshire Yea mug, bought incongruously on the M40 and filled she later revealed with “throat coat” for her nightingale voice.

Delighted to be on home turf after the southern leg, she and her folk boys and her five “brass boys” from the Brighouse and Rastrick opened with Cranbrook: in a nutshell, While Shepherds Watched, to the music of Ilkla Moor Baht'At. It turns out to be a Kentish tune, as Kate, always a humorous hostess, gleefully teased her fellow Yorkshiremen.

Maybe she was softening them up for the next southern interloper, The Cornish Wassailing Song, a nod to Kate “having family down there”. Kate’s arrangement for this 2013 new addition could not have been more joyful, typical of these shows’ tunes that were banned from churches in Victorian times for being too jolly.

Apparently there are 30 variations on While Shepherds Watched, of which Kate knows 18, two of them, Sweet Bells and Hail Chime On, being the night’s sing-along favourites.

Kate’s own Christmas song, Home, was in keeping with her trademark melancholic compositions, and the non-festive bird song of The Lark was equally haunting, to counter the jollity that climaxed with another new addition, a Yorkshire version of We Wish You A Merry Christmas.

Could there be anything merrier? Maybe waking to find a DVD of Kate Rusby Live At Christmas – recorded on Yorkshire soil at Harrogate Royal Hall – under the tree on Christmas Day morn.