The ghost of Christmas greed is upon us and I for one, won’t be succumbing to it’s powers or charm.
The constant corporate promoting of Christmas self, began nationally I’d say, around the 24th October. It appears it does so every year now.
I absolutely love Christmas (in fact I love all things seasonal in the calendar year) but I cannot abide all the festive bullshit appearing in October / November.
First up, we have “The Christmas movie channel” – with it’s continuous tat of D-list, made for TV films, promoted by one or two B-list films in all the adverts.
The actors are all wannabes or failed former actors whom appeared in a film / TV series, you might vaguely remember, that was last popular at sometime in the 70s or 80s.
After decades of ridicule, they reappear, all botoxed out, in a sad, bang average Christmas D-list film, with all the original plot lines of a Peter and Jane Ladybird book.
Moving on to “The Christmas Eve, new pyjamas” americanised trend!
A few years ago, they started selling them just for kids.
Then they moved on to adults.
Now in a bizarre twist of, let’s sell you as much complete and utter crap as we can, we have matching all the family new pyjamas!
What in God’s name is this inane drivel?
A fool and their money really are, easily parted!
To top it all off in the sad stakes, people actually take photographs of themselves in their matching Christmas PJs and post them on social media *faceplant*
They believe that everyone else is actually interested in seeing these pictures online?
I’ve got news for you… they’re not!
What started out as a bit of fun for children (a £10 here and there) now shows them listing bog standard PJs for £38 and upwards, that’s each, not for the family set.
Get a grip people… until recent years, this was never a thing at all.
I didn’t have new PJs every Christmas Eve, none of my family did, no one in our street did, no one at school did and I’d never heard of anyone ever carrying out this corporate “Christmas tradition!”
It’s so bad we now have corporate businesses asking people to buy pyjamas to donate to, “those who won’t be able to get a new pair of PJs this Christmas!”
Pyjamas at Christmas came from grand parents or Aunties, who couldn’t think of anything else to get you and they were ordinary pyjamas, not some tat with a Christmassy emblem ironed on to them.
As if that total bollocks of a money spinner wasn’t bad enough, we have what perhaps is the ultimate in tat promotion… the “Christmas Eve box!”
Yes folks, they actually sell you an empty box, for you to fill up with pointless, unusable pap, at bargain prices, for children to open on Christmas Eve!
Corporates are not satisfied with the yearly Christmas Day rituals, they now encourage parents and grand parents (for a price) to let you open presents BEFORE Father Christmas has even got over your country!
Perhaps my favorite Christmas Eve box has to be the “I’ve upcycled (sprayed with old cans of paint they had left in their garage) old fruit boxes (a free supply of coming from Dave, a friend of the hubby who works on a market and can get loads of them for nowt) and sold it/them to you, for anything from £5 and upwards.
“Aren’t they fabulous!” The social media sellers claim… no they are feckin not.
They are complete tat, have no place in a UK Christmas and are a needless expense for people who mostly struggle to buy genuine Christmas presents and send them to Father Christmas.
Shops and stores even sell them.
It’s an empty box people, treat them as such and WAKE UP!
Sorry, but it cannot go unmentioned, in the realms of corporate tat selling, the ultimate in costing you more of your hard earned cash… the Christmas “Elf on a shelf”
Resulting in 24 days of the most tat buying, product wasting, utter shite, there can possibly be, in it’s strenuous links to Christmas.
From social media pictures, memes and other assorted lame promotions, never in the history of mankind, have so many been conned by so few.
This is a corporate trend and nothing more.
This is about as much of a Christmas tradition as picking up a strange pet’s warm dog turd with your bare hands and then getting a paper-cut when you wipe them on an old newspaper, you found in the hedge next to it.
We see numerous wasting of toilet rolls, vast amounts of chocolate and other E numbered sweets (when the elf “decides to have a day off” meaning Mummy was too pissed to come up with an idea the night before), even partial opening of real presents that distant family members have visited and left under the tree for the children to open on Christmas morning!
Oh what a riot it is seeing all that fun you’re having, for a full 24 days prior to the most expensive time of the year…
A popular dagger in the corporate heart of the “Christmas tradition” has to be… the Christmas jumper!
Traditionally, elderly relatives would spend hours and hours from August, knitting for their kith and kin and the resulting garments would be given, with love, as presents.
These would be traditionally too long in the arms or length ways and worn on Christmas day.
It was a novelty, but still in the greatest of British Christmas traditions, a caring relative had taken so much time to produce said garment, that once worn, would be packed away or used as wrapping around a delicate Christmas display and chucked in the attic, forgotten about until the day you passed on or moved to a new house.
Today, Christmas jumpers are “All the family” corporate nonsense.
Yes we’ve seen your social media pictures. Yes, you do all look ridiculous. The corporates thank you for your £30 lay-out to pay towards their Christmas bonus’
Have a day off.
Finally, we have the corporate supermarkets, advertising their Christmas wares, from October onwards, renaming the entire season as “Christmas” instead of letting us all enjoy bonfire night, then settle into a world of blandness before December lands.
Do you realise the vast amounts of money they spend on making their adverts?
Then there are vast amounts of money spent marketing the adverts.
We now have “sneak previews dropping” of their blatant wasting of money.
All their prices of traditional stock lines are raised to ridiculous levels, prior to the 28 day period from the end of November, to give the false impression of “A special offer”
There’s never a corporate supermarket “Price war” on the same product pack size and stock line… funny that!
“But it’s our busiest time of the year!” & “Good sales at Christmas can make or break our year!” is the complete bullshit peddled to the media by them, every year.
It’s almost a tradition.
Just look at the £Millions they’ve made come April or summer each year, their first/second quarter profits are off the scale.
As I said, I love Christmas, top food, plenty to drink and some presents for the little ones.
But let’s try to keep it real, instead of promoting every cock-eyed, made up, bullshit corporate tat selling promotion, via your social media accounts.
Not everyone can afford them and remember, there’s “A cost of living crisis!”