Angela Mollard: Christmas is trapped in a time warp and we need new festive classics now
We’re trapped in a festive time warp where the same songs and movies rule Christmas, leaving this generation without any memorable holiday entertainment, writes Angela Mollard.
Don’t you love the moment when you’re in the supermarket and suddenly realise Christmas is just around the corner? The mince pies are winking in their red boxes, the marshmallow Santas beckon by the checkout and the brussels sprouts, roundly neglected for the other
11 months, are thrusting forward as MVPs in the fruit and veg section.
It makes me so happy I find myself levitating through the aisles, dreaming up chocolate and cherry pavlova iterations like a less-luscious Nigella and planning to freeze rosemary sprigs in ice so festive drinks come with their own Christmas tree.
And that’s when I hear it. The unmistakeable jingle-jangle. The warbling cheer. Then the over-emoted banshee cry as Mariah throws herself with gusto into All I Want For Christmas Is You, the anthem that earns more annually than several small countries.
Did you know that song is more than 30 years old? It’s been doing the festive heavy lifting for longer than my children have been alive and, all credit to Ms Carey, but I’m bored with it.
We need a new cracker Christmas song because there’s been nothing of note this century.
While I could listen to The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York (1987, best in class) and Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas (1984), and Wham!’s Last Christmas (again, 1984) and the OG Bing Crosby’s White Christmas (1942), surely this generation can produce something of note.
I know Miss Swift is occupied with wedding plans but Mr Sheeran has red jumper energy. Couldn’t he rustle up something of note? Actually, just checked – he and Elton John released one in 2021, instantly forgettable and as appealing as reindeer droppings.
And while we’re at it, how about a new movie. Hugh Grant has had five children and a likely hip replacement since Love Actually became our go-to back in 2003. Meanwhile, the actor who played that forlorn kid who lost his mum and stretched credibility by smashing his way through Heathrow’s airport security is now aged 35.
The only other options, unless you want to go back to last century’s Home Alone, is Elf or The Holiday. While Cameron Diaz’s knitwear has held up well, the latter came out when John Howard was our Prime Minister, Instagram had yet to launch and Jude Law still had three kids (he now has seven by four women, somewhat ruining the theme of happy-ever-after with the delectable Ms D).
Every December, our family gets our televised festive fix with the adorable Gavin & Stacey Christmas specials. But now James Corden and Ruth Jones have sailed off into the Welsh gloom, leaving us all bereft, it’s time for something new.
Perhaps rom-com alumni Richard Curtis could be bundled into a clove-scented room with some mulled wine and tinsel and ordered to come up with a new offering. If he could repurpose Bill Nighy with a tune equally as woeful and hilarious as his Love Actually rendering of Love Is All Around, all the better. Oh, and Liam Neeson. With Pammy Anderson as his love interest. Would adore that.
Frankly, I don’t get it. The 21st century is awash with “content”. Everybody and their nephew is producing the stuff, so why can’t we have some fresh material to replace movies and songs that are as stale as the panettone that has sat in Aldi since September?
Christmas is the most enthusiastic and sentimental of holidays but it’s stuck in a time warp. It’s like we’re trapped in a snow globe that’s shaken once a year, dislodging some creaky old lyrics and films from the analog era. It was all very charming the first 500 times but at this rate Love Actually now qualifies as an endurance sport and I’m more likely to have grandchildren before something memorable comes along.
Smarter people than me reckon the paucity of Christmas offerings is because we all love nostalgia and are less welcoming of new material. Apparently, we’re happy to replay the old classics even if it’s like being passed a box of Cadbury Favourites with only the Flakes remaining.
I appreciate it’s impossible to imagine the likes of Billie Eilish in candy cane-printed tights singing about mistletoe without dissolving into existential angst. Or Drake recording some supermarket-friendly ditty that isn’t seven minutes long featuring a woman crying on voicemail about seasonal heartbreak.
Likewise, it’s true that the cultural marketplace is so fragmented and ephemeral that anything of note trends on TikTok for three days and then disappears.
As for movies, I get that streaming has lowered standards. Whereas once you’d pay to see a kid defending his home from burglars or an angel earning his wings, or Emma Thompson’s heart breaking over and over again because of that bastard Alan Rickman, now it’s all superheroes and multiverses and princesses (usually run through a woke detector to erase all humour).
But Hollywood needs to get its bauble on, and pop stars need to stop being intimidated by Mariah because, right now, all we want for Christmas is a fresh song.
C’mon artists, get to it. Or we really will have a Silent Night.
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Originally published as Angela Mollard: Christmas is trapped in a time warp and we need new festive classics now
