The season to be jolly brings with it some TV festive folly

HEY, ho. There may be an economic slump in full progress, but the world as seen through the spangly lens of the TV ad machine is never-neverland.

Marks and Spencer has spawned a musical extravaganza featuring the stars of this year’s X Factor; Morrisons have Freddie Flintoff building a supermarket, and declaiming that “people will come – people will definitely come”; and the “family” in the Littlewoods campaign are all destined to receive a gadget, whether they like it or not. Never mind whether “Mum’s” credit cards can stand the white heat.

But the star of this year’s televisual Christmas panto is definitely the ordinary little lad in the ordinary home who stares dolefully from the window on to rain, snow, drab daylight and starry night. He kicks his heels, drums his fingers, bolts down his food and takes the stairs four at a time in an effort to hurry time along so that Christmas will come sooner. His parents say nothing, but exchange concerned glances.

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Is he ill? Or is he just desperate to hear Santa squeezing down the chimney?

Grown adults have reported weeping with abandon about this ad and its simple feel-goody-goody pay-off line, in which we see the boy finally waking on Christmas Day.

While his own mini-mountain of pressies lies unheeded, he gets the clumsily-wrapped gift for his parents out of its hiding place so he can at last give it to them.

The message is that it is so much better to give than receive (especially if shopping at JL, obviously). Yes, there is a small “ahh factor” – but adults crying over a fictitious child who isn’t sick from a preventable disease? Please...

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Now obviously these ads represent, as one commentator put it, the retail industry’s end-of-term disco. They’re a furious straw-grasping effort to recapture some momentum after months of terrible sales in a climate that may or may not be entering free-fall. No-one seems to be sure if things will get much worse before they improve or just worse. Improving the economy involves us encouraging us to spend, but without sounding too curmudgeonly about it, shouldn’t economic panic make us more picky about how we spend, and whether those we give to actually need what we buy them? Isn’t there a good reason why so many of us are stumped as we try to find just the thing for Uncle Bob or Grandma? Could the truth be that they don’t need and probably don’t want more “stuff”, and wouldn’t we all feel good if we donated on their behalf to a charity of their choosing?

Or maybe we could hold back a couple of pounds per gift and donate that...

Voluntary and community sector organisations, which generally operate in a lean and effective way, are losing £2.8bn of Government funding between now and 2016, and they include many which help those suffering the effects of economic downturn – giving, for example, debt, housing and unemployment advice, and supporting those suffering mental ill-health and other health problems.

Jane Arnott, Head of Advisory and Consulting for the Charities Aid Foundation, said: “Charities are the first port of call for many people needing help because they are unemployed or getting into debt due to the rising cost of living. The huge increase in need for these services is putting many charities under enormous pressure as they strive to help everyone who comes to them whilst they themselves are impacted by the rise in inflation and many are affected by Government cuts.”

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In a survey carried out by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, 98 per cent of charity leaders said they expected their economic situation to get worse in the next 12 months, with one commenting that this was “the most trying time for income generation in the last 30 years.”

Thirty per cent they expect to cut paid staff in the next three months – yet 38 per cent said they expect to extend their services in that period. “We’d never tell people how to spend their money,” says Nick Wilson Young of NCVO, “But so many of us don’t really require much in the way of gifts, and setting that against the needs of those who don’t have anything is a no-brainer, really.”

Sally-Anne Greenfield, of Leeds Community Foundation (LCE), said: “It’s not a matter of asking people not to buy gifts for the family but, if they can, to think of local charities, too.” The LCF is running a Christmas appeal to those pensioners who feel they don’t need their winter fuel allowance to donate it to others who are less well off.