Christmas comes, but once a year is enough. For otherwise, how could society cope with more than one annual hunt-the-stocking-filler? Around now, in our modern celebration of the rebirth of Santa, panic sets in. In Yuletopia there would be time to consider carefully and shop imaginatively for our loved ones. But this is no Yuletopia. Advertising, the internet and all the Siren voices of publicity bang the drum for feckless shoppers. The tribe obeys. We rush out to buy, buy, buy the fashionable present of the year.
And, in the process, we create some surprising bestsellers. Recent annual surges have made Christmas favourites of a book in defence of the semi-colon, and another teaching easy Latin for beginners. Coming up fast this year on internet sales is The Dangerous Book for Boys, which promotes the ancient skills of Just William with penknives and ginger pop. Our national craze for trivial pursuits spikes the sales of catalogues of more factoids about pop groups and football clubs than any sane reader could need or read. Cheerful history illustrated and potted does well.
What is the common factor of unexpected packages in a pear tree? They are small enough to fit in a stocking. They are all (vaguely) improving, and/or erudite. And they all hark back nostalgically to John Major’s past of warm beer, old maids and snow-covered Christmases.
The clever hustler should anticipate the next runaway stocking-filler. The Beginner’s Guide to Heraldry, anyone? The Comic Calculus? The Relativity Picture Book? Sanskrit Made Easy? The rest of us will be carried along by the tide. For generosity and the urge for self-improvement are genuine Christmas virtues, not just Gadarene crazes.