I HARDLY watch TV these days. A far cry from when I used to study and write about it. But you’d have to be from another planet to miss this year’s prolific crop of Christmas Adverts – surely some of the best story telling on TV at the moment. Consumer capitalism and a rewrite of ‘Twas the night before Christmas’ in 60 seconds. Having just enjoyed Paddington 2 on the big screen, the small screen version certainly gets my vote.

The adverts are cute, nostalgic, heartwarming… and completely pernicious… Let me explain.

TV is a very powerful medium. Particular images and narratives are less persuasive than most people think, but their combined effect is much more powerful than we realise. TV tells us not what to think, but what to think about.

This insight lies behind the well-documented Russian interference in recent elections. Disguised Russian propaganda is aimed not at telling voters which party or politician to vote for, but is designed to set an agenda that focuses on dissent, disharmony and social division. Donald Trump uses similar tactics. His early morning tweets aimed at basketball players, foreign visits and calling out his political opponents are eagerly seized on by his critics who focus on name calling and distracting slanging matches. And by doing so they help him achieve his objective: to distract voter attention from his political agenda in which individual rights, freedoms, support for the marginalised and protection of the environment are all being systematically dismantled. Two text-book examples of successfully setting the public discourse agenda.

Christmas adverts work in the same way. They may be less malevolently intentioned but they are supremely effective at projecting a cohesive and pervasive image of idealised family life to which most of us struggle to aspire.

Images of tables groaning with food (while use of foodbanks is at an all-time high); families smiling and happy (whereas Christmas is the time when more people contact Relate than any other); everyone excited by receiving the presents they want (even though most families have less to spend this Christmas than last and many gifts are either unwanted or superfluous to requirement). The Ads set an expectation of what Christmas should be like; we are trapped by the aspiration and become discouraged by our inability to turn our Christmas reality into any of the TV ideals.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the build up to Christmas; for me and many in Salisbury this Advent weekend’s Darkness to Light Services at the Cathedral (unmissable and completely free!) mark the beginning of the Christmas countdown. But perhaps there’d be fewer family breakups, more Christmas cheer and less people feeling guilty and inadequate if we learn to distance ourselves from the artificial and unrealistic hyperbole of a TV Christmas and celebrate instead the modest reality that is our own real Christmas.