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Oh yeah?

CHRISTMAS is just around the corner, and that means loads of specious advertising claims that begin “Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without…”. Usually, these are for comestibles like Hellman’s Mayonnaise, without which Christmas would almost certainly still be Christmas.

However, there are also new things that do mark the authentic modern Christmas. Think of media stories chronicling “the great Christmas getaway”, or expensive charity cards, for which an insulting small share actually goes to the good cause in question.

Here, then, are WalesHome.org’s* top 10 harbingers of the truly modern festive period, in no particular order. Please feel free to add your own below but – be warned – carols, mince pies and the Queen’s Speech need not apply.

1. Nigella Lawson, wearing something low cut in velvet, in a fake kitchen demonstrating how to make the “simplest Christmas lunch ever”. Her shows feature such immortal lines such as: “I use Andalusian goose fat, which I get from my local butcher, but any free range goose fat from Southern Spain will do”.

2. Feral children who turn up at your door and cheerlessly intone the first three lines only of “We wish you a Merry Christmas” before thrusting out their hands for payment. King’s College it ain’t.

3. Inexplicable battery taxonomy. CR2032, L, AA, AAA?

4. Radio phone-ins that ask whether political correctness is killing Christmas, usually preceded by a row in the West Midlands or similar about the local authority’s decision to secularise its festive celebrations.

5 A host of rather odd sickly-sweet drinks pretending to be coffee on sale in Starbuck’s, Nero, Eat etc. Egg nog latte, anyone?

5. The single mum who jets off for some winter sun with her new boyfriend, leaving multiple small children at home with cans of special brew/pizza/selection box. She returns to tabloid initiated witch hunt, protesting: “my kids are my life”.

6. Supermarket adverts in which almost-proper celebrities run into each other in-store…and are best of friends.

7. A long, earnest and meaningful conversation with a cabbie. This usually follows the work Christmas do, and involves such topics as the true meaning of Christmas and the pernicious consequences of political correctness (see 4).

8. The media covering pre-Christmas sales as if they are a total novelty, despite covering pre-Christmas sales last year, and the year before (repeat to fade).

9. Ridiculous, high concept perfume adverts.

10. An absence of even idle speculation about the possibility of a white Christmas.

* I am indebted to Facebook friends for coming up with most of these ideas.