Tis the season.
For what?
Commercials, of course.
Holiday commercials, filled with tinsel and snow, all merry and bright.
Urging you to get your Christmas shopping just right.

We’re here to help you, they say, with nary a snarky grin.
You see, we know what trouble you’re in with your kin.
The right presents can bail you out.
Listen to our adverts, Bubba, in case there is some doubt.

We promise you magical moments that stretch for miles
Shiney glitter, cheery pizzazz, and gourmet food in piles upon piles.
Listen to us and avoid those dreaded holiday missteps
Shopping with us avoids those nasty family upsets.

Read on Donner, read on Blitzen, read on Red Nose, too.
We’ve watched all the commercials until our face is quite blue.
The wisdom we’ve gained should last you all year.
If you put out your charge card with a modicum of good cheer.

Our celebs who sell to you are quite an understated lot
Well, except for Mariah’s pitch for Victoria’s Secret — which is quite hot.
So sit back with a brand-name drink or two
And learn what we’ve learned… so you don’t have to:

Lesson # 1. There is poetry in holiday advertising taglines.

Give a little thanks.
Make your world merry.
Find your thing for the holidays.
Let’s make it sparkle.
A Christmas to remember.
Discover the joy.
Feel the connection.
Live every moment, all year round.
Give a gift that unleashes theirs this Christmas.
Helping you become more Christmas.
The gift that says everything.
Find gifts, deals, and holiday feels.
Make merry memories.
It’s time for the GOOD stuff.
Fuzzy feelings.
Questions that matter connect us more.
Go big on the little things.
Give joy.
A holiday to remember.
The world needs more Santas.

Lesson #2: Christmas is a time for resolving issues like isolation, alienation, sadness, social awkwardness, and teenage sullenness. Shopping at just the right supermarket can help resolve these issues.

Lesson # 3: Random acts of kindness can change lives — when the right soda is in hand.

Lesson # 4: Miracles happen. They often occur with a well-placed call to Door Dash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, or Rappi. There are also blocks and blocks of gaily decorated big box stores waiting to help you with all your holiday dilemmas. (Sorry about the empty and boarded-up storefronts downtown. It happens, you know.)

Lesson #5: It is not about shopping. It is about bringing people together through shopping. (So, yes, I guess it is about the shopping.)

Lessons #6 through infinity — because I’m tired of numbering this stuff.

College kids:

Being a college kid coming home for the holidays can be a warm and wonderful heart-felt experience. Or, it can be a trial by fire as the entire family lays bare your flaws by asking probing questions about your academic situation, your sex life, the prospects of grandchildren, and your career prospects.

Only grandma is smart enough to ask you: “Are you happy?”

Teen angst:

Being a teenager at Christmas is fraught with peril. Your parents act like children. They embarrass you at every turn. They impose upon your social media and video game sea of isolation.

Celebrating the holidays is totally uncool. Friends get better stuff than you do. You find out you have no friends. You are an alien, all alone on this god-forsaken planet with two weeks to go until the holidays end and normalcy (dark, inexplicable moodiness) returns. Somehow during this moment fluctuating between homicide and suicide, some schmaltzy Christmas tree craft that you made when you were, like five, flops into your lap and a wave of memories floods into the teen zone. You begrudgingly join the family for a great supermarket-harvested feast and even grandma is tolerable.

Senior citizens:

Meanwhile, at the local senior citizen center, life is positively giddy thanks to the band of volunteers from the giant insurance conglomerate down the street who take time off from work to serve up meals acquired at the local supermarket chain’s closest outlet. And chocolate. Festivities include holiday-appropriate chocolate treats.

Yes, old people take quite a hit in Holiday commercials. They are either lonely, befuddled, techno-idiots, or, well, lonely. Their road to salvation is through artfully crafted seasonal chocolates, chance meetings with someone holding a spare Coca-Cola, parents who are more clueless than they are, small children with big hearts, a puppy, or aliens.

I haven’t encountered that last one in a commercial yet but it is only a matter of time.

Music in the lives of Holiday commercial people is loud, frightfully upbeat, and relentlessly overrun by chimes and jingling bells. It is a wonder you don’t see more hearing-aids in Christmas commercials. Or Christmas commercials for hearing-aids.

Single parents and Christmas

Single, working, moms are uniformly harried, lonely, and bewildered by their sullen children who suddenly discover the true meaning of Christmas through chance encounters with old people holding spare Cokes, random puppies in the snow, unexplained joys in various supermarket aisles, artfully crafted holiday chocolates from their childhoods, or the inexplicable delivery of a pizza by a Grub Hub motorcyclist during a blizzard.

These kids gain a sudden (and mostly inexplicable) appreciation for their overworked moms and go on to do the laundry, fix dinner with foods purchased from the nearby supermarket chain, help decorate the tree, and give hugs. Yes, they give hugs.

Sometimes the introduction of another adult by a single parent sets off a mountain of insecurities in their teenage child resulting in dark glares, refusal to make eye contact, refusal to answer simple questions, or refusal to pass the salt during very intense dinners. In Commercial Land, a discrete but gaily-wrapped gift from a local jewelry franchise can smooth troubled waters.

Rarely, a holiday commercial can make you think. In one instance, an adult sets a sweet kid up for disillusionment with a thoughtless promise: “Be as good as gold and you’ll get just what you want.” This particular one is a heartbreaker. See it here.

Truly heartbreaking Christmas commercials will start out cheerfully enough on the strength of two or three slow and melancholy piano chords. Then they will hit you right in the tear ducts. Squeeze the bloody salt tears from your eyes and leave you limp and questioning the reason for living. Oh, yes, and Merry Christmas from all of us at your favorite jewelry store to all of you.

Rich people’s Christmas

The higher up the economic food chain you go, the holiday commercials become more aesthetically pleasing and consequently, more soul-less. Dior, Ralph Lauren, etc. feature nourishment-starved models with fabulous clothes and garish makeup and exquisitely wrapped presents that they give to each other, along with knowing looks that say “The 10 percent know how to celebrate a good holiday, eh?” I envision them returning alone to their empty, soul-less, apartments and crying into a tall pour of Bailey’s and scotch on Christmas Eve. Or maybe I’m just jealous.

One of the more curious messages for the holiday, from Marks & Spencer: “This Christmas, do only what you love.”

Yes, ‘tis the season for self-indulgence. And if there’s any doubt, here’s the text that goes with the Marks & Spencer advert: “In a television campaign that will run from today, M&S appears to be encouraging shoppers to do what they want this Christmas, instead of being hidebound by endless chores, the demands of others, and the tyranny of festive perfection. Using a starry lineup of singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor, actresses Zawe Ashton and Hannah Waddingham, and TV star Tan France, the M&S missive for 2023 is to put yourself and your own needs first.”

But wait, there’s more …

Whether it snows or not is a critical consideration, even if you live in an area where it has not snowed in the known history of mankind.

Sooner or later, your vehicle will break down, en route to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. You will be placed at the mercy of kind-hearted strangers, gaudily decorated trucks delivering Cocoa Cola, or, in one instance, a muscular reindeer who pushes a broken down SUV all the way to its destination at absolutely no charge.

People tend to break out in dance and song more often over the holidays. In commercials, that is. I have seen normal adult people do this at Disneyland over the holidays. It seemed appropriate and normal at the time.

When the last bottle of Coca-Cola rolls out of a vending machine – and this happens more often than you might suspect during the holidays – the appropriate thing to do is hand the bottle to the person standing in line behind you. That person may be an elf or down-on-his-luck neighbor. Most likely it is that guy with the suspiciously familiar white beard who is in a position to perform a little holiday magic.

Magic is the operative experience in holiday commercials. There is a lot of shimmering glitter and glowing images and flying tinsel when good things happen — or the name of the advertiser pops up. Timely encounters – like a sullen teen meeting a lonely old man in a fast food restaurant and sharing a Coke or a bitter old degenerate who finds a freezing cold puppy in a dumpster – have their own sort of self-contained magic.

Remember, “it is the little things that make Christmas special.”

I’m not sure what that means. Maybe a diamond? A smile? An on-time USPS delivery? A pair of hand-knit gloves from your reclusive neighbor? A puppy? A cupcake with green and red icing? A wink and a nod from the curious stranger with the long white beard? A golden, spray-painted, Christmas tree made from brittle macaroni? A photo of you and your bestie in reindeer antlers and red noses?

Just rest assured that items with globally recognized logos and a number of major corporations can step in and save your Christmas from becoming a complete disaster. Know that any number of delivery services will put the right gifts and foods into your hand just in time to salvage that burned turkey and fixings, or the ones that the dog pulled off the table.

Corporations are our friends during the holidays. They save our bacon. God knows, I haven’t yet seen a commercial from Amazon. Presumably, they are still recoiling from all the money thrown at them on Black Friday.

People in commercials give each other impossibly well-wrapped presents. Just saying. I haven’t had two corners of wrapping paper line up perfectly in six decades. Commercial Land people wrap presents as tightly as a Marine Corps private’s cot.

Christmas commercials mainly have one of two goals: To make you laugh. Or to make you cry. If you both laugh and cry during a commercial, that’s solid gold, brother. Laughing and crying are well-known additives that help nourish and replenish souls running on empty during the holidays, thanks to all the competing demands of holidays.

But it is Mariah Carey who wins the Inadvertant Entendre Award for the season in her cheeky Victoria’s Secret commercial: “Guess who? It’s me, Mariah! Obviously on my way to doing Santa at the North Pole!”

Really? Does Santa have time for that?

What does Mrs. Claus say?

Mariah?