I remember the moment when I stopped believing in Father Christmas (I was nine years old and stumbled on an Action Man hidden in a cupboard which coincidentally turned up at the bottom of my bed on December 25) but I don't remember when I stopped believing in Christmas television.
Perhaps it was when I realised that, more than at any other time of year, television at Christmas reflects what we are; we stare into the screen, minds softened by wine, shirts stained by gravy, trousers stretched by pudding, and see ourselves looking back at us. And what a worrying sight that is.
This year's Christmas programmes from the BBC - which were announced yesterday - are a case in a point. If you can make anything out through the glare and the lights and the hysteria, you will notice that the programmes fit into several categories that, taken together, form a diagnosis of our collective pysche: the lack of attention span, the obsession with triviality, the endless attachment to stuff and how much it costs, the epic hugeness that signifies nothing and - worst of all - the rudeness, the shouting, the noise.
So, with less than four weeks to go until Christmas Day, I would like to offer an alternative festive television guide - the one you won't see in the Radio Times. It is a guide to what's on, but more important than that, it is a guide to what the programmes really mean.
First: Doctor Who. It's the big Christmas family show that gets adults and children together isn't it? But, my, the 50th anniversary episode was depressing. Friends tell me I may have finally outgrown the programme (I stopped believing in Santa when I was nine and I stopped believing in the Doctor when I was 43).
But no: the Doctor Who Christmas special will be another example of what the programme has become. It is obsessed with speed over stealth, noise over silence, big over small. Everything is epic, so nothing is epic; where the plot should be, there is a whirling black hole. And in this universe, everyone is sarcastic, everyone has a one-liner ready, or a putdown. The writer Taylor Parkes put it perfectly the other day when he pointed out that Doctor Who used to be a show about a wise time lord but is now set in a universe where everyone is a wise guy, which led him to his inevitable conclusion: anyone who prefers the new version of Doctor Who to the old one is an imbecile.
That attitude in Doctor Who - the swaggering smart-alec-ness, the sarcasm - also infects Sherlock, which is another of the Christmas highlights from the BBC. Just the other day, a friend told me she couldn't bear to watch the programme any more because of the sneer on the face of every character. But that is our sneer, I'm afraid. That is who we are (reflected in the modern phenomenon of internet trolling) so the programmes that are made for us reflect it. The original Sherlock Holmes - difficult yes, but always gentlemanly - has been replaced by a git with no heart.
So what else do we have at Christmas? The Call Centre, which, according to the BBC Christmas press release, is another of the highlights of the schedule. But what is it? It is a reality show set in a call centre in Cardiff. It is a programme which we will sit down to watch only to be interrupted by calls from the sort of centres that are in the programme. It represents the circle of consumerism that swirls and swirls. It is the attachment to objects we can buy, underlined by the likes of that John Lewis ad: chilly, consumerist emptiness disguised as a children's story about a hare.
But no, at least we have Downton Abbey and The Great British Bake-off and Call the Midwife. There will be Christmas specials of all those shows won't there, so surely their tinselly toastyness indicates that Christmas hasn't really changed after all?
Possibly. Downton is always diverting and the Bake-off is eccentric, strange, and marvellous but I wonder if all those cakes and Edwardian servants aren't a bit of a distraction? In other words, as long as we are looking at them - and other nostalgic programmes this Christmas such as the remake of Open All Hours with David Jason - perhaps we won't notice the lack of anything new. Maybe programmes that remind us of what we used to be will make us forget what we are.
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