The scene where someone says: ‘This is gonna be the best Christmas ever!’
Anyone saying anything close to praising Christmas will be divorced, disgraced or dead in time for Mrs Brown’s Boys. Take Alfie Moon, who uttered the fateful words in EastEnders in 2012, inevitably ushering in a tsunami of tears, humiliation, poorly executed Queen Vic punch-ups, and a cold Christmas night sleeping on the sofa.
The scene where two people who are having an affair exchange gifts
When’s a discreet time for cheaters to swap greetings? Slap bang in the middle of Christmas Day is the norm. Bonus points to Corrie’s Kevin Webster for the time he ditched his dinner and turned up in the backyard of married squeeze Molly, forcing her to feign a desperate desire to take the Christmas bins out and intercept him. Festive!
The scene where an unexpected visitor comes back
From Frank Butcher to Kat Slater, a Walford Christmas wouldn’t be a Walford Christmas without a dramatic, unscheduled knock at the front door. But how can that estranged relative make a devastating return on 25 December itself, when surely planes, trains and taxis are almost entirely impossible to come by? Somehow, each year, someone seems to manage.
The scene where nobody eats Christmas dinner
Turkeys shall remain stoutly frozen or emerge from the oven burned to ash after a hard day of sobbing and screaming. Even if the bird’s cooked, it won’t survive: any slaved-over feast, from Cindy Cunningham in Hollyoaks’ dinner (including panic-defrosted turkey) to Max and Tanya in EastEnders’ Christmas wedding spread, is destined for the carpet.
The scene where the annual snowfall arrives
In reality, an ashen sleet flurry is the best one can hope for, but in soaps snow falls relentlessly: landing on revellers’ anorak shoulders, stinging the sobbing face of Emmerdale’s spurned Zak Dingle, or fluttering gently down on to Pauline Fowler’s rigid corpse after an alfresco coronary in Albert Square. Beautiful.
