Badvertising Christmas Special Part IV: It’s Not Christmas Without A Coke

By now the haze of Christmas parties is bound to have worn off and you'll be sitting there with nothing to show from the festive period but a photocopy of your genitals and an unplanned pregnancy; you're probably looking back on the month or so preceding this and thinking, "Where did it all go wrong?"

That's simple. You're one of these people who gets so excited about the concept of Christmas that you vomit all over your facebook with excitement the first time you see that terrible Coca Cola advert.

SO YOU'VE PROBABLY ALREADY GUESSED THAT I'M GOING TO RUB IT IN YOUR FACE WHILE YOU RUB YOURSELF AND WONDER IF YOU MIGHT HAVE CRABS.

After all, that's what Christmas is all about.

Let's talk turkey (aha!), the Coca Cola advert is an unmitigated disaster zone of hackneyed ideas and 50s'-style 'buy this, it's good for what ails ye' advertising. The fact that so many people see it as a sign of the festive period beginning is enough to make any sensible person run out into the street with a bolt-gun to start euthanising children before their parents manage to indoctrinate them into believing that advertising has anything to do with the start of the Christmas period.

Of course, I wouldn't do that as I'm far too afraid of the brutal honesty of children to ever go near them whether I'm armed or otherwise.

Regardless of that fact, the Coke advert signifies the beginning of Christmas to many people who like to pour onto social networks proclaiming, "OMGCOKEADVERTITZTOTALLYCHRIMBOYAAAAAALOLMAO."

The obvious question is 'What has Coke ever done for Christmas?'. That is, aside from inventing Santa Claus in his current form and covering up your relatives' alcohol problem on Christmas day. Coca Cola isn't a particularly festive drink and therefore they've taken to disguising it with picture-postcard, Werthers Original style visuals and a song that is, I'm afraid to say, worse than Cliff Richard's Millenium Prayer.

Coca Cola doesn't bring the joy of the season and the idea of millions of people suddenly rushing to put their trees up when the Coke advert comes on fills me with a sense of dread usually reserved for a nuclear holocaust and a new Michelle MacManus album. Have you ever actually seen a Coca Cola truck like that? Are they like TV License Detector vans? There's only one and it spends its life on a thankless PR dirge around the country?

Yes, Coca Cola invented Santa Claus, the red suited jolly version at least and we're supposed to be infinitely grateful to them for allowing us to use him in our children's folklore. Of course we should be! Thank you Coca Cola! Given the size of the company, they could easily charge you royalties every time you put out a mince pie and a glass of sherry on Christmas eve.

But wait. If we are to assume that the 'accepted' version of Santa Claus as the big, jolly red-coated gent that we see today comes directly from the marketing bods at the Coca Cola Company* then we might as well be telling the children of the world that their presents will be delivered by Ronald McDonald or those dickheads from the Pepsi adverts. Christmas owes nothing to Coca Cola and the mere suggestion that it 'marks the beginning' of festivities is often made by the same people that complain when there's Hallowe'en costumes in supermarkets in mid-September.

Still, if you are one of the bleating sheep that rely on Coca Cola to tell you when you can start being nice to people then think of it this way: when you're a kid, you believe that Santa Claus is real and maybe you believe that he's directly responsible for delivering Coke. Then you grow up and you find out Santa isn't real and you actually have to go out and buy gifts for the people you love. Maybe you want to cling on to part of that Christmas magic and the first sight of the Coca Cola trucks gives you that sense of wonder and joy that you've been lacking since you hit puberty.

It's a nice thought isn't it? It still means you're being manipulated into feeling an emotion by an advertising company though. Maybe that's what Christmas is all about after all.

Still, Merry Christmas an' all that.

*In fact the depiction of Santa Claus in his 'current form' predates the advertising of Coca Cola but given that Father Christmas is essentially a series of lies to build the hopes of children and amuse the dull lives of adults (much as Hecklerspray do), we thought we'd keep the lie going. You're welcome. Merry Christmas.