It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

If you needed reminding that the festive season is upon us, you need look no further than your beverage cup.  Cola companies, of course, have a long tradition of festive cans, one even going as far as to adopt the festive colours of red and white as a permanent design feature of their cans (although there is a story that the red and white we now associate with Christmas is in fact a result of that particular cola company imposing their company colour scheme on the season.  Frankly, although the idea is cynical, it’s believable as, asked the questions ‘do you believe in Father Christmas?’ and ‘do you believe those bastards in marketing would even try to hi-jack Christmas for their own evil ends?’, I know which of the two I would be more confident in answering in the affirmative.  Having said that, if a cola company was responsible for the clothing colours of any character beloved of children, then, given the sugar content of the stuff they peddle, I’d of thought the tooth fairy would be a better example).

Cola cans now come in festive designs and, if you like that sort if thing, it’s all very jolly.  Ho Ho Ho.

But the fun doesn’t stop with a tin can.  Coffee cups now come with Christmas characters on them.  Costa are an excellent example of this, with four different designs of paper beaker, a snowman, a reindeer, an elf I think and, possibly, Santa.  Given the design limitations of a receptacle that, to be at all useful, has to have a rather abrupt straight edge to the top, they all look like beloved characters that have been in an industrial accident, but they are sort of jolly all the same.

Naturally, as soon as I saw them, I wanted to ‘collect the set’.  Be advised, drinking four cups of coffee in one day is sensational for productivity, next to useless for producing anything of worth.  You may well be typing like a demon, but the word ‘wheeeeeeeeee’, with another 274 ‘ees’ is not, as I soon discovered, acceptable content for an e mail or text.  At least not on its own.

In case you are wondering, coffee saturation is not best dealt with by drinking alcohol in a classic ‘you give a drunk guy coffee, so it’s best to give an over-stimulated fellow booze, right?’.  That’s the sort of idea you have after your forth store-bought latte.  I discovered.  It doesn’t work.

Elsewhere, the commercial signs of Christmas are everywhere.  The worse thing about them…they work.

Day to day, I have very little interest in port.  If I am at a restaurant and am having the cheese board, I’ll probably order a glass because a socially acceptable way to drink fortified wine and gives you the necessary courage to try the stilton brooding thuggishly and untouched at the end of the slate of cheeses that these bloody people insist you eat from left to right.  However, wandering down the ‘seasonal’ aisle of the supermarket at Christmas (in effect, the entire shop), if I see a half bottle, boxed with a cheese knife and a cheese board, I want it.  I don’t need it, I don’t particularly like it, but I want it.

The same goes for whisky.  I feel manipulated, I should not be thinking ‘must…have…scotch’ just because it comes packaged with a couple of engraved glasses.

In days of yore, Christmas was heralded by perfume adverts on telly (switching, at 5:30 on Christmas Eve, to holiday adverts, because in yore, Dads earned the money and had to be told how to spend it), now, it’s the same stuff you walk past every day, in a new box, that lets you know that the season of peace and goodwill to all men, and especially consumers, is upon us.