It’s bad this year. I hardly watch any commercial television, and when I do, I hardly ever sit through the commercials. There’s a mute button on the remote and a pause button (since I’ve got the digital satellite thing) and the all-purpose on/off button, and between those, it’s the rare time that I’m inert enough to actually watch a TV commercial. So how bad is it that with three weeks left to go till Christmas, there are already some of them that I never need to see again. One specific ad, one ad campaign and one whole genre of holiday shopper ads. And a partridge in a pear tree.

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Annoying materialist child

There’s an ad for Target, I think, (Or maybe it’s Old Navy) where we have the quick mix-n-match shots of slightly-hysterical-looking young people desporting themselves in different vignettes. Now here, now there, always peppy, always adorned from head to toe in the right merchandise. And in the middle of all this maniacal gaiety, there’s a pithy exchange between a woman and a little girl.

The woman says, “Do you believe in Santa?” and the girl somewhat sardonically replies, “I believe in cashmere.” And the woman bends an adoring look on the girl at about the same time as I’m addressing the set and saying, “You what?! You little sprat, I’ll give you my foot in your backside to believe in!”

Probably just as well I never had kids. But then, if I did, I think they’d know a little better than to go around quipping to adults in a bored voice about how they need to have the costliest knits not just to wear but to believe in. That’d be a kid that I’d have wearing burlap to her senior prom for sure.

Probably best to move on.

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Don’t be a jerk! Be a cog in the shopping machine!

These ads by Visa started showing up even before the mad holiday rush (you can see one HERE), but now they’re really in high gear. You have a lot of happy shoppers making their way in a rather mechanical way through the process of completing their purchases. There’s a sort of smooth, factory-precise feel to it, highlighted by showing the whole scene from above so that we can see that, yes, every shopper is proceeding through checkout and taking only their alloted time — no more and no less — while a happy soundtrack keeps time. And, coincidentally, they are all using a Visa card to pay for things. And then … disaster!

Some dumb schlub wants to write a check or pay cash! That is NO good for our shopping machine. The soundtrack stops abruptly. Other shoppers cast aggrieved glances toward the ne’er-do-well. Accidents and spillage occur. We see that the clerk is trying his best to get the exchange done quickly, but it is all the fault of that selfish Luddite who wouldn’t use plastic. Nothing is any good. There goes Christmas! The idiot eventually completes his transaction with a look that tells us that he is suitably horrified and will never let it happen again. And then the machine comes up to speed again and the voiceover tells us that Life Takes Visa.

Now, I’m as fond of capitalism as the next person, and I happen to use plastic constantly. But to tell those who use checks and cash that they’re the ones impeding progress is just crap. In a lot of the stores near me, my transaction is the one that takes more time. It’s the other shoppers who don’t have to wait for a machine to verify their transaction who go sailing through. So let’s not start doling out Christmas paranoia until we’re sure where it’ll end up.

And in any case, who wants to feel like their shopping experience is quite this robotic? Ugh! If it weren’t for the soundtrack, it’d look like a scene from “1984.”

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The crappy gift ad

I just happened to see one from Philips Norelco, but they’re not the only culprit — the ‘crappy gift ad’ has become a Christmas mainstay. It shows people on Christmas Day opening up presents that they obviously don’t like. Often it’s not just one gift — our poor recipient opens up box after box, holding up dull and weird things and wearing a pained expression or making flat remarks that make it plain that he or she is now having a really sucky Christmas. And the message is clear. THIS is what will happen to your nearest and dearest if you don’t buy what we’re selling in this commercial. Because after all, Christmas is all about stuff, right? It’s not really the thought that counts; it’s the stuff. And if you give lousy stuff, then your beloved spouse, paramour or relative will have a rotten Christmas. And you will be bad. And all will be wrong.

I do see the humor in this common experience, and some of these ads have a lot of fun with bad Christmas presents and the things you have to say to save the situation. If these ads hadn’t multiplied so much in the past few years, I’d still be thinking they were funny. As it is though, they just seem tacky to me. Everyone has gotten less-than-magnificent presents in their life and everyone has given them. When that happens, it doesn’t actually ruin Christmas at all, because it really is the thought that counts. And sometimes you find out that the gift that strikes you as odd or uninteresting on first sight may turn out to grow on you. So why keep teaching people how to be shallow and thoughtless? We can usually manage that on our own, can’t we?

Well, in any case, I suppose I should stop harping on about silly commercials and get on with all the wrapping, baking and decorating I have to do.