The Emma Maersk - a 45,000 tonne container ship from China, renamed the “SS Santa” in honour of its mission - arrived in the UK on 4 November 2006, loaded with thousands of shipping containers full of toys, books and computers. A Chinese Online News service managed to obtain an oddly wistful quote from an English bystander : “It's like a dream to see such a mountain-like ship floating on the sea, and all the more incredible to learn that the ship is bringing Europeans with Christmas made mainly in China,” which sounded more like a quotation from a Chinese Government press release. 3,000 of these containers were unloaded and the toys, books and computers distributed to warehouses and then sent out on their next leg to fill the shelves of Toys ‘Я’ Us, Tesco and the mysterious back rooms of Argos. On Christmas Day 2006, carefully wrapped packages were hurriedly opened by children, teenagers and parents, their paper discarded, and the keys to temporary enjoyment revealed in all their glory.

I grew up in the 1970s in an averagely well off British family for whom, in common with many families, Christmas didn’t have an overtly religious meaning – but it did have a meaning. Despite my lack of religious conviction, I feel a special bond with my childhood Christmases. So what was it that I loved so much?

It was, and still is, a time to remember the past year, to be together and enjoy each others’ company, to have fun, and to make the most of the time we had off school and work. I wanted to find out how much of a part material goods played in those special Christmases, so I put together a list of the particular things that stuck in my mind:

· Putting together the plastic Christmas tree and watching my Dad test the lights, then sorting out the decorations from last year before they were put up.
· Seeing brazil nuts, walnuts and hazelnuts in the bowl in the sitting room, and wondering whether I was allowed to open the lozenge-shaped box of dates.
· Buying the Christmas Radio Times, and finding out what films and Christmas specials would be on TV.
· Listening to the radio the Sunday before Christmas and finding out what would be the Christmas number 1 in the singles charts.
· Visiting friends and family, dropping off presents (the contents of which I rarely knew) and being driven home while my sister and I counted Christmas trees in house windows.

One thing that I also remember was being allowed to give out presents to all the family, one by one, from under the tree, and finding out if I had got anything that I had asked for. It was, interestingly, the handing out of the presents that stayed with me far more than what was actually in them; in fact one Christmas, I seem to remember there were more presents than there had ever been, and I struggle to remember a single one of them.

And I don’t think those memories are particularly unusual for anyone in their 30s, or even for anyone in their 80s or 90s; just change the odd detail and I reckon not much changed from the 1930s right up to the 1980s. I am not old enough to remember Dickie Valentine or Bing Crosby first time around, but I do remember the sounds of Slade, Wizzard and Mud, telling us to have a Merry Christmas Everybody, wishing it Could Be Christmas Every Day, and reminding us that some people might be Lonely This Christmas. And there were shops full of toys – to me the Woolworths' marathon–length TV adverts were magical – but what they actually offered was limited in both quality and range; if you didn’t fancy a hostess trolley or a K-Tel LP then you had better not shop at Woolworths! And those songs, essentially feel good music to wash the winter blues away and remind us that this is a special time, a time that has meaning beyond the acquisition of stuff in its shiny wrapping paper.

I have hinted that the 1980s started to change things, and so they did. With the end of the Callahan government in the UK and the Carter government in the USA, and the bringing together of Thatcher and Reagan to tell us that change was overdue and greed was good, we changed.

The British Toy Retailers Association, each year, award Toy Of The Year to the item that has both sold in huge numbers and has the elusive star quality that other toys can’t match. The complete list can be found at their website, and it is a fascinating history of which toys really mattered to the British family. This is part of the list between 1970 and 1991:

1970 – Sindy Doll
1971 – Katie Kopycat writing doll
1972 – Plasticraft modelling kits
1973 – Mastermind board game
...
1978 – Combine harvester
1979 – Legoland space kits
1980 – Rubik’s Cube
1981 – Rubik’s Cube
...
1985 – Transformers
1986 – Transformers
1987 – Sylvanian Families
1988 – Sylvanian Families
...
1991 – Nintendo Game Boy

What is really interesting is how simple and untechnological some of these toys were. In 1976 the most popular toy was a type of kite! The 1970s really does seem to reflect the times in its toys. In the 1980s we saw the rise of cross-merchandising - the Star Wars and Transformers toys - and in the 1990s the unstoppable rise of technology in the form of Gameboys, Furbys and Tamagotchi. Now I’m not going to pass judgement on the relative merits of these toys, but the merchandising and technological aspects show what was happening – there was commercial power behind toys, and those toys were increasingly becoming Christmas essentials.

Well, so much for the type of things being sold; what about the quantity. According to the Office Of National Statistics, the UK’s non-food retail sector was worth £127 billion in 2005. I have lost count of the number of times I hear retail representatives talking about the importance of Christmas period to the annual turnover of UK businesses; obviously for retailers of cards, fairy lights and crackers this is true, but how true is it really? An analysis of the ten years between 1996 and 2005 show something rather startling : the non-food large business sector – a sector that, given its advertising spend and potential seasonality, you would expect to be very dependent on Christmas - averaged only 23.7% of its annual sales taking place in November and December combined. In other words, the Christmas sales boom isn’t as significant as we are led to believe.

Companies would not advertise unless their adverts were effective in shifting products, and what we see in the run-up to Christmas is a huge push to sell toys, games and an endless variety of ephemera that the large companies like to sell. The retail sector seems to be deluding itself that it needs to keep pushing more new products made of plastic that will be lucky to see past the next Christmas, when it could just carry on as normal and make a decent living. The figures I analysed still show that we spend about £9 billion in November and December on Christmas presents - £150 for every man, woman and child in the UK – and you can guarantee that it will mainly be spent on what the large retailers want us to buy.

Now I want you to go and listen to the words of “The Christmas Song” by Nat King Cole and think about what they mean to you. The Problem With Christmas is that it has become a battle between what we want it to mean, and what the retail industry want it to mean to us. As with all stories of this type, we are being sold a dream of something we never realised we craved – a Christmas that fulfils some short-term desire for material happiness, but ultimately leaves us feeling empty. We are left craving the real happiness that has long eluded us in our search for commercial Nirvana, and in its wake a planet that has fewer resources left for the following year.

Have a wonderful Christmas, in the best way you possibly can.