It's enough to make you yearn for repeats of the Val Doonican Christmas special.
With the main competition to the BBC and ITV for under 30's viewers no longer coming from Sky Digital but rather the Internet and online DIY TV like YouTube, we thought we might save you some time by recommending the best and worst of the online Christmas fare. So get ready for Fox News' Bill O'Reilly laying into idolatrous pagan pinkos, migraine-inducing light displays and thoroughly obscene depictions of dear old Santa Claus. (For even more in this vein, check out tomorrow's Guardian Guide.) So in no particular order, here goes...
1. Gay Elves
Butch computer game elves dance to the Village People's YMCA. Highly disconcerting.
Inexplicable French TV advert showing Father Christmas wiping his copious bottom on letters children have sent to him. Alarming to say the least.
3. Mystery of the Stolen Lights
Very weird 3-minute detective story perhaps based on the actual theft of someone's Christmas lights. Features a particularly unnerving performance from the director's mum.
4. 12 Days of the War on Christmas (Fox Style)
Contrasts Fox News' reports on the war in Iraq with their mad host Bill O'Reilly fighting the war on Christmas. It's the third year running, but like the war on terror, the war on Christmas has no end.
5. Bill O'Reilly says Merry Christmas
Yet more from the war on Christmas. O' Reilly bravely shouts "Merry Christmas". Bullshit with an oak leaf cluster.
Footage of a house turned by some cretin into what looks like the Ministry of Sound' s New Year's do. When his neighbours complained he should take his lights down on the grounds they couldn't sleep, he protested that this was all a part of the war on Christmas.
7. Another Awesome Chrismas Display
Yet more in the same vein, probably visible from space.
Reasonably funny song talking about how shit Christmas is. Notable for its sacrilegious intent.
9. Mr Hankey the Christmas Poo
South Park's unfogettably scatalogical, horribly hummable contribution to the festive season. If you haven't seen it yet then prepare to be dumbstruck for the full twelve days.
Memorably terrible special effects in this daft attempt to grunge up Christmas.
11. Don't Buy your Wife the Wrong Xmas Present
Set in an ER department post festivities, this features several men who were dumb enough to buy their spouses bad gifts. The chap with the vacuum cleaner attachment rammed up his arse makes for a particularly eyewatering spectacle.
12. Family Guy
Featuring various characters from the obscene cartoon despoiling various Christmas Carols.
Superb fake movie trailer with Santa as a Tony Soprano Godfather-style character who employs his elves to kneecap people. A young lad who insistently demands a pony is left a horse's head in his bed.
Infinitely the most popular thing on You Tube this Christmas, this features various people singing the 12 days of Christmas. Watch out for the octogenarian dressed as an elf.
15. Christmas in Hell Features a clearly emotional Adolf Hitler celebrating Christmas alongside Satan. Yet more sterling work from the South Park boys.
16. Drunk Students
A load of drunken berks singing Xmas songs. An argument for abolishing higher education.
Featuring Angry Kid disabusing us some cherished beliefs. Worth it for Santa's appearance.
18. Relient K
Staggeringly po-faced rock band Relient K contemplate suicide after the singer's girlfriend leaves him. "I look under the tree/But there's nothing to see." Slade it ain't.
19. I Hate Christmas
Existential rant by clearly distressed young man about money, presents and how he hates everything.
20. Held Hostage by Santa Train
Amazing, seemingly interminable footage of cars sitting at a level crossing as a vast, ludicrously festive neon train crawls by. You can almost smell the rising road rage.
