Steve Daunt long for a quieter, simpler season of selling.

What’s wrong with Coke bottles and cans of Budweiser followed by a few Ferrero Rocher?  Plain simple fare backed up by plain and simple Christmas ads.

Coke jumped on the Santa bandwagon, Bud had Clydesdale horses galloping all over our thoughts while one bite of a Rocher transforms us all into Henry Kissenger or Madeline Albright.

There were essentially aspirational ads. We spend to make ourselves feel good. Christmas is a big happy bubble that reality can’t touch. The dark stuff, like mid-winter itself, can be held at arms length by shopping, sugary water and chocolate.

Wahey.

Then Austerity arrived but it was hand in hand with a weird type of social conscience. We need to be careful with what we spend and remember those less fortunate.

It started with a chocolate bar and a football last year. War porn. The centenary of that football game in no-mans land and the marketers jumped on it. These brave boys sacrificed their Christmas so you could have yours...

It was and is making us all Scrooges who had to be thought the real meaning of Christmas before going out and buying everything in the ad anyway.

That telescope to see the man on the moon? The Christmas feast fit for Lazarus?  They can all be yours.

Has it reached its peak or nadir this year? Will there be more frail old men flogging their wares next year? Our appetite for sharing these ads will probably mean we will.

Can we escape them? Bah Humbug. Maybe if those Clydesdales drop a few cases at my door early in November 2016, i’ll be in a state of (un)consciousness to escape them

Only another seven days left this year anyway... Ho ho ho.