Well, well, well. Here we are again. Time flies when you’re pretending to home-school your feral kids, Instagramming your sourdough starter and adding another bottle of gin to the Ocado order. Who’d have thought, at the beginning of this year, that we’d be huddled round the telly come Crimbo, anticipating Adland’s festive take on a chaotically-mismanaged global pandemic? How have the nation’s Donald Drapers dealt with the Covid-behemoth? Let’s find out, shall we? *rubs hands, pours sherry, pares quill*

We’ll kick off with Asda, because it’s forgettable dross that needs to be dispatched sharpish. After patting the elephant in the room - ‘Christmas is going to be different this year’ – we see a series of scenes showing Christmas exactly as it usually is; a family enjoying food, gifts and decorations. This is Route One stuff, and I’d much rather see what their sour-faced neighbour Christine is up to in the house next door.

On to Aldi, whose ad creatives are still off their tits, barricaded in spare bedrooms on Zoom, refusing to kill off Kevin the Carrot. This year he’s ejected from a fighter jet by his co-pilot, parachuting into the wilderness, accompanied by the hashtag #WhereIsKevin. Guys. #NOONECARES. Shove him up Lieutenant Turkey’s arse and incinerate them both. Let’s move on.

Also at the magic reindeer dust are TK Maxx, whose bizarre spectacle features a goat trussed up in designer gear, strutting her stuff round a farmyard. As the owners watch, bemused, from indoors, the farmer admits he bought the outfit, and says she deserves it. It’s sort of like Babe, but shit.

Argos’s offering features two sisters staging a spectacular magic show for their astonished family. It’s quite sweet and would be a decent stab had not John Lewis explored the same concept earlier this year as part of their autumn campaign. Maybe Argos could circle ‘Originality’ in their own Book of Dreams?

Amazon pirouettes in to show us how it’s done, with a proper tearjerker. A budding ballerina has her performance cancelled due to Covid, and stages the show in the street, helped by family and friends in the surrounding blocks. It’s beautiful, heart-warming, and supports the arts, which Amazon could also do if it paid its tax.

So relieved to see Olivia Colman’s got some work this season, narrating one of the Marks & Spencer ads. A profiterole stack of stars provide the voiceovers for their tempting teasers – Jeremy Irons, Gillian Anderson, Helen Mirren… like an episode of The Crown, but with canapés, and a luxury shellfish platter. Now, I do like looking at nice food, and M&S not-just-food looks delicious, but… a camera panning over a panettone while someone famous tells you how yummy it is? Contrary to their tagline, it IS just food.

For true innovation, we must look to Lego. I’m a huge fan of their advert, for the principal reason that it almost features the word ‘fuck’. This is bold stuff from the brick-players - one minute you’re watching kids making dinosaurs, conjuring a wonderful world of monsters and princesses; the next, the echo of an F-bomb (implied in rhyme) resonates round a cosy living room. Brava! I felt all warm inside.

I saw a headline saying Disney’s ad was sending people into floods of tears. Well, I must have sandbags in my ducts because it left me dryer than Mark from Bake-Off’s burger buns. It’s about a girl who mends her grandmother’s old Mickey Mouse toy - blah blah nostalgia, blah blah passing-of-time, bleurgh ballad about love being a compass… Pointy? Useful for DofE? Balls to that - the Mickey fix isn’t even that good; you can see the join at the ear thanks to the granddaughter’s piss-poor stitching. My thumb was heading firmly south, I’m afraid.

McDonald’s is an interesting one. It’s the animated story of a single mum and her teenage son, struggling to contain his inner child. Of course, his bonhomie is brought out by a Big Mac, which I found hard to stomach, but there’s a winning sentiment there, nonetheless. The kind of sentiment that makes me wish my own boys could stay ‘forever young’. The kind of sentiment that reminds me they would sell the family dog to a fur farm for a Happy Meal.

I also quite like the DFS attempt, which features Wallace and Gromit lugging their mobile sheep carol-singing machine down a snowy street. Gromit gets chilly so they’re invited in to a family’s house for a nice cup of tea on a sofa. Do you SEE? DFS sells sofas! The advert advertises the product! Genius. However, A Comfy Carol also made me uncomfortable – the plasticine pair are clearly in some remote Tier 0 area that’s exempt from current restrictions, or they would never have set foot in another household. Unless they were just testing their eyes…?

Maybe Dominic Cummings is worried about not getting any presents this year and has asked Tesco to intercede on his behalf, because they’ve somewhat recklessly gone with the message that this Christmas there is no naughty list. Of all the years to dispense a pardon to the baddies, I’m not sure 2020 is the one, but rest assured, if you’ve built a snowman out of stockpiled toilet rolls, or awarded a multi-million-pound PPE contract to your thick-as-mince mate, don’t worry – Santa will still get you your air rifle for the Boxing Day shoot.

I tend to save the best till last, but John Lewis… well, it isn’t the best IMHO. JL adverts are usually streets ahead of everyone else, but this year’s, though charming, doesn’t quite hit the mark. The story starts in a park with a girl retrieving a boy’s football from a tree, then moves through a series of small – and slightly weird - kindnesses in differently-animated worlds. Worlds that include sentient snowmen and hip-hop pigeons. Each vignette celebrates various art forms and artists, which is lovely, but visually it’s a bit jarring, and the oddness of it all jumbles the message. Some of the kindnesses are just too peculiar – for example, a snowman using his own snow-flesh to make a wheel for a car? I guess the weirdness stops it sliding into sentiment, but still. Nothing can beat 2011’s The Long Wait, for me. The ultimate Christmas advert, never bettered.

And finally… Instead of saving the best, I’ve reserved the worst. It’s Coca-Cola, who I intend to report to the police for crimes against advertising. This commercial felony features a dad who suddenly and inexplicably decides to hand deliver his daughter’s letter to Santa, setting off into the wilderness with barely a rag to his back. It just makes no sense at all, him paddle boarding across an ocean, scaling a mountain, trekking through thigh-deep snow, when he could have just remembered to post the bloody thing and saved himself limb-threatening frostbite. He also drinks his bottle of Coke at completely the wrong time in the story, right at the beginning, spaffing the advertising load prematurely. Wait till the end, when he really needs it! As he journeys erroneously towards the North Pole, he gradually grows a beard, to lend a little authenticity to this self-indulgent bullshit Odyssey. It’s so like a man, to fuck off on an audacious and completely unnecessary jaunt just to get out of childcare. The tagline is ‘give something only you can give’ – maybe a hand with the washing up, or help with homework, you shirking absconder?

Sorry to end on a rant; it’s been a tough year. Next Christmas, I’m sure we’ll be back to normal, crying at joyous, sprawling family reunions as Macy Gray sings a Leonard Cohen cover, followed by an Alison Jackson-directed video of Trump eating a mince pie in jail. I can’t wait.