Emma Cowing: It’s Christmas, holiday adverts are coming

I DON’T know about you, but I’m not ready for Christmas. By which I don’t mean that I haven’t got round to thinking about what sort of Cognac to buy Great-Aunt Grizelda yet, or that I can’t remember whether I threw out last year’s wreath or packed it neatly away in the attic, although both of these things are true.

I mean I’m not ready to accept that Christmas is on its way. I’m still getting over the fact the Olympics aren’t on any more. I’m still pining for Gabby Logan on the late-night sofa larking about to Spandau Ballet’s Gold with David Beckham and a giggly Jessica Ennis. I’m refusing to set any of the clocks in the house back by an hour. I’m still convinced summer can do a U-turn. I am in denial. So, I can’t say I reacted with unadulterated joy when the first Christmas tree went up on my street at the weekend. It appeared stealthily, overnight, like graffiti. But a Christmas tree in October is far more insulting than a wall filled with offensive graffiti. It’s the neighbourhood equivalent of releasing wind in public and remarking smugly: “Cor, that was a belter, wasn’t it?”

But sadly, for the Christmas-phobics among us, this is merely the tip of the tinselly iceberg. On Friday, John Lewis will release its 2012 Christmas advert. You’ll remember last year’s. The cute kid who spends the whole of December excitedly counting down the days until the 25th, the twist being that it’s not getting the presents he’s all of a flutter about, but giving the present he thoughtfully picked out at John Lewis to his Mum and Dad. Although how a six-year-old can afford John Lewis prices, I’ll never know and how did he get there without his parents? Did he take the bus? Did he shop online? Whose credit card was he using? Are we sure this child is really six?

The ad was a huge hit, going viral before it had even hit TV screens and so now, apparently, the pressure is on at John Lewis to replicate the magic. No wonder. The company recently posted a 60 per cent jump in profits and its highly-succesful series of Christmas adverts have been charged with adding a much-needed boost to the business at a time when high street retailers are clawing it out for a share of an increasingly squeezed and penny-pinching market. Adverts are big business, and none are bigger than the Christmas adverts.

Indeed, soon, there will barely be room in the schedules for the TV programmes, so jam-packed will they be with commercials attempting to sell us everything from cheap jewellery to expensive perfume. The very earliest ones have started already, of course – those weird ads that begin airing around July for catalogues in which you appear to be able to buy “an entire Christmas” in a oner, as long as you sign something that means you agree to mortgage your eldest child and spend from now until 2032 paying it off. But I’m not talking about those. I mean the proper Christmas ads: John Lewis. Marks & Spencer. Frasers. Coca-Cola. Royal Mail. The ones that, despite the fact they are all badgering you to buy, buy, buy, make you go just a little bit gooey inside.

Now, it doesn’t really do nowadays to be seen to be liking adverts. It’s a bit like admitting that you prefer gravy made out of a packet rather than the homemade stuff, or that you secretly read the copies of Take A Break in the doctor’s surgery, rather than leafing through the Economist. And yet I do believe that, for millions of us Brits, something of a warm glow comes over us when a Christmas advert pops up on the telly.

For me, it’s tied up with indistinct yet cosy childhood memories – the promise that something good is coming, that normal life will be suspended for a few magical days. Look, they must be, it’s on the telly isn’t it?

Christmas is, after all, the most commercial date in the calendar. A feast of over-shopping, over-eating and good old-fashioned over-indulgence, it would (and it pains me to say this, truly it does) be a shadow of its former self were it not for the big department stores, the mass commercialism, the neurotic desire to hunt out that perfect pressie for the ones we love, the ones we tolerate and the ones we can’t abide but can’t get out of seeing every 25 December.

So, I’m looking forward to the Christmas ads. It’s when denial turns to acceptance, and the realisation that summer is truly over finally starts to hit home. I might even get round to turning those clocks back.