THIS season’s pressure-building television adverts promote “the perfect Christmas” and “not putting a foot wrong at Christmas”.

Frankly, such notions are impossible, but then again, maybe not, because year upon year the Chapter House Choir’s trio of Carols By Candlelight meet both the highest standards and expectations. Even the 800 mince pies made in myriad forms by choir members to accompany the post-concert chatter hit the spot.

Each year, this is the one indoor concert series where it is pretty much essential to keep the hat and coat on, all the more so on a perishing Thursday night – even if the plethora of candles gives off a sense of warmth to greet the choir as they process to the Chapter House to JS Bach’s Gloria, sei dir gesungen.

Of early note is Sir Philip Ledger’s Advent Calendar, a setting of a poem by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, no less.

As ever, director Stephen Williams interweaves the familiar with the not so familiar and the new. Plenty of Christmas’s greatest hits are here: The Holly And The Ivy in Sir Henry Walford Davies’s blissful choral arrangement; a BBC Radio 4 poll’s most popular carol, Silent Night; Classic FM’s favourite, the very apt In The Bleak Mid-winter; and David Wilcocks’s especially joyful I Saw Three Ships.

These concerts always feature a world premiere; this time the honour goes to York composer and former choir member Andrew Bunney, whose Voices In The Mist, featuring the words of Lord Tennyson, hauntingly combines voices with handbells ringers, the other trademark of these memorable nights.

Choir founder Andrew Carter’s new arrangement of Unto Us A Boy Is Born is another handbell highlight, while John Hastie’s Angels From The Realms Of Glory and a revival of Carter’s 2008 version of Jingle Bells are well received too, as are David Pipe’s contributions as organ accompanist and soloist.

Away In A Manger takes everyone back to their nativity schooldays before the night ends with a playful surprise, Little Drummer Boy.