Matthew Taylor: Bah to humbug! This year I’m determined to enjoy myself One harrassed father is going to break with tradition and embrace the clich © of Christmas 22 December 2002

Years ago, the novelist and semiologist Umberto Eco wrote a brilliant essay about the film Casablanca. What gave the movie its particular appeal, he argued, was not its plot or characterisation but the way in which it successfully exploited so many cinematic conventions. He joyously entitled his essay “The Clich ©s are Having a Ball”.

This is the season of clich ©s. Smiling mum and dad gazing at their cherubic children joyfully plucking tangerines and Brazil nuts from stockings, while in the background the beautifully wrapped presents nestle under the twinkling Christmas tree. You can almost see the snow falling and hear the sleigh-bells ringing and the carols playing while you read this.

Yet many of us feel a profound ambivalence about Christmas, and for a great number of parents the main feelings associated with the time of year are inadequacy and resentment. And this is not restricted to poor parents trying to keep up with the current average Christmas present spend of  £300 per child. Research for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that parents living on less than half the earnings of a middle-class family spent nearly as much cash on gifts as the better-off, with often disastrous consequences for family finances. Even those of us who can easily afford PlayStation 2, the new Manchester United kit or Rapunzel Barbie are far from happy with our purchases.

We feel manipulated by advertisers to buy piles of expensive stuff, much of which our kids will be bored with or have broken by the time of the Queen’s speech. I do insist on putting fruit in my boys’ stockings and, being sensitive to my feelings, they have learnt to feign enthusiasm for the bag of mixed nuts. But my part of the deal is to cram the rest of the space with overpriced gadgets and branded accessories.

http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=363637