Right. I've watched my first Scrooge film of the season, followed by the Great Escape yet again, after having hit Tesco very early this morning** to get the fridge stocked for the 25th. The office is officially in skeletal mode and the darts is on the telly. It really is beginning to look a lot like Christmas.Remember, though, that while we all kick back and relax at this time of year, for the righteous, it's a finger-wagging extravaganza.
Here are some Canucks being a right yuletide pain in the ass earlier this month.
Santa may be trading in his plates of cookies and glasses of milk and sucking back cold ones this Christmas.
That's the message Labatt is sending after ads surfaced at Mac's Convenience Stores across Ontario saying, "Leave one out for Santa. He's driving," and show a bottle of Labatt's Blue de-alcoholized beer.
But some consumers say it sends the wrong message. "I don't think that's quite appropriate," said Kathleen Clifford, 65, who saw the ad at a Mac's at Gerrard and Mutual Sts. yesterday.
"Children see that and they think we'd better leave beer for Santa instead of cookies and milk." she said. "I have grandchildren and great-granchildren and I don't approve of it. Maybe I'm an old fuddy-duddy."
Alan Middleton, a marketing professor at the Schulich School of Business at York University said the ad breaks the "golden rule" to never associate drinking with driving in a sales pitch.
"They're positioning that you can have a beer and you're still safe to drive, but they can't control how many of those 0.5% beers people consume," Middleton said.
"They thought being this lower alcohol would get them off the hook, but I don't think it does. This is a silly ad and if they've got a decent product, it should be powerful enough."
To précis, I think this means that there should be no 'merry' in Christmas.
** Ice on the inside of the windscreen - that global warming's a bastard.
UPDATE: Via the Curmudgeon, more miserable Christmas wishes and Chris Huhne hopefully quoted out of context (if not, he is a bit of an idiot).
