All I want for Christmas? The old-fashioned traditions back where they belong
Giving a Christmas Eve box of ‘early’ presents, the Coca-Cola truck, Elf on the Shelf… new festive traditions don’t get me in the mood, says Flic Everett
Two major Christmas adverts this year have focussed on “creating new traditions” – John Lewis, with its inexplicably needy Venus flytrap; and M&S, with a gaggle of angry, flame-throwing celebrities.
Rather than lean into tired old tropes involving snowy villages, Santa’s sleighbells and children singing carols, the festive season is now all about doing what you fancy. Decades of endless, dull Dickensian sameness are out; you doing you is in.
A recent survey by Ancestry.com helpfully pinpointed the top five of these new traditions – and what a sheep-like bunch of Americanised consumers we’ve become. The most-loved new thing to do at Christmas breaks entirely free of the clanking chains of stockings and midnight mass – instead, it’s now “watching Christmas adverts”.
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