Why are Americans so unhinged about Christmas?

The most obnoxious advert on American television this Christmas season features a thirtyish man telling his wife he ‘got us a little something’ at a holiday sale. He leads her out to the colossal driveway of their newly built modernist mansion to show her just what: two brand-new GMC pickup trucks, a boxy, blue one for him and an effeminate, red one for her.

Anyone who has watched more than an hour of American TV over the past decade will know what comes next. She happens to like the blue ‘man’s’ one, leaving him to admit meekly that, well, he’s fond of red. In the world of American corporate copy-writers, it is always Becky who’s trying to get the yard work done so she can watch the football game over at the boozer, and it’s always Bucky who can’t concentrate on cooking dinner because he’s so busy daydreaming about redoing the drapes. Viewers have come to take this gender surrealism for granted.

What was galling about the ad, though, was something that may not even have crossed the GMC copywriters’ minds. That blue truck is a Sierra. It carries a list price that can run to $69,000. The red one is a more modest Yukon. Those only go up to about $66,000. Still, we are talking about $135,000 worth of truck and — even if you get it on sale — about a man giving a Christmas gift to himself that is worth more than the annual income of the median American family. There are a lot of new-car-in-the-driveway adverts like this. If you stay tuned, you may see Kay Jewelers’ exhortation to buy your wife not one but two diamonds for Christmas. ‘One diamond for your best friend,’ Kay advises, ‘one diamond for your true love.