Infantilisation or Xmas, it’s a time for the (big) kids or let’s get the Xmas rant over with early…

OK. I’m the first to admit that Xmas is not my thing. Look, I can’t even write the long version. I prefer the abbreviation. Just an X. It somehow makes the whole thing less, harmful?Well, just less.

And I almost can’t be bothered to go over the old arguments about it. Again. The repetition; the repetition (haha), like nothing ever happens; the same awful music every year; the over indulgence; the mawkish sentimentality; the waste of money buying stupid stuff for people who don’t even want it. We all know the arguments and we all know which side we stand on the debate on the subject.

But this year, along with all the usual stuff, we must deal with infantilisation. Let’s take the current advertising for the wii games console as an example. It appears that the desire of the Nintendo company is to sell games that are made for small children to grown ups.

So we see TV’s Ant and Dec chatting with some ladies about the virtues of standing on a small plastic plinth and wiggling your arse about to ‘keep fit’; we see them chatting to some men who are definitely old enough to buy beer in pubs without being asked for id and have proper legal sex and drive real cars and kill real people in real wars about swinging a bit of plastic about in a small room with a DFS sofa (sale starts now, four years free credit) and a fully fitted carpet, pretending to play golf or tennis; or maybe holding a very tiny, very plastic steering wheel and pretending to drive a car.

Now, I’m not saying this is some sort of evil plan to make us all stop thinking and act like big babies but it does look like it’s having the effect of making us all stop thinking and act like big babies.

There are so many wonderful things to do in our wonderful world, especially when we are as lucky and healthy and rich as so many of us are in this stupid little island that there is no reason ever, ever, as fully grown, fully functioning adult, to have to spend any time with these stupid plastic baby toys.