'Tis the season to win lolly.Thanks for all the positive feedback following my ‘Smidding Revisited’ column a couple of months ago. Despite some doubts on my part, plenty of you enjoyed the updated piece – and many readers told me that they hadn’t seen the original article when it was first published anyway, so found my comments useful. With this in mind, I thought that it would be a good idea to give the same treatment to my very first ‘Christmas’ article from two years ago. This remains one of my most talked-about columns, and although it didn’t need quite so much editing as the ‘Smidding’ piece to bring it up to date, it certainly needed some tweaking – proof again that our hobby is continually evolving, even if sometimes we may not notice it!
Whilst I can genuinely claim ‘by popular demand’ this time, there will be no more ‘Revisited’ articles. But please remember that a complete Smorgasbord archive can be found at www.compersnews.co.uk.
So throw another log onto the fire, pour yourself a hot toddy, and let us look at Christmas in Comp-land. We all know that this is invariably the busiest time of the year for our hobby, and having to juggle all of the extra competitions along with the other pressures that December brings can be a nightmare. OK, so there are presents to wrap, cards to write, the family to see, and a turkey twice the size of your oven to attempt to cook. But what about the fact that the shops are absolutely packed with people getting in the way of precious entry forms and buying up all of those special competition packs without even noticing? The checkout queues, meaning even more dirty looks than usual when you ask for all of those separate receipts? The relentless daily advent competitions? The postal delays at this time of year? We compers certainly see things from a different perspective… until the last December entry has been posted off, anyway. Then we can finally settle down to enjoy the fun with everyone else – although after 2005’s comping adventures, this year’s festivities are likely to include copious amounts of Kit Kats, Spanish satsumas, and slightly stale Walker’s crisps!
It’s a pity that the busiest time of the year for our hobby is also the busiest time of the year for most people generally. It makes December one big, mad rush, and in many ways detracts from the fun. There is a school of thought that tells us to make a real effort to enter comps this time of year, simply because ‘normal’ people (and the more disorganised compers!) don’t have the time or inclination. I think that this is true to some extent, but ultimately I think that the benefits are minimal. While the quantity of entries may indeed decrease, the quality certainly does not as the more serious compers step up their efforts in response to the perceived ‘better chance’. But there’s no harm in trying to be more organised at this time of the year to at least give yourself a fighting chance of entering as many comps as possible. Buy your qualifiers early, before the mad rush in the shops, and plan ahead to beat the Christmas post and the delays it inevitably brings. One particularly important rule at this time of the year is to buy your on-pack qualifiers as soon as you see them. This is always a good idea anyway, but is absolutely essential at Christmas when stock disappears from shelves very, very fast. Seasonal lines, alcohol and confectionery especially should be bought as soon as they are seen – stores might not stock the product at all after Christmas!
It’s fair to say, I think, that promoters no longer look upon Christmas as the ‘special’ time they once did. But happily, a couple of major competitions have appeared this year, and will have needed some extra planning and effort to enter. This is always good news for the keen comper at any time of year since the more hurdles a task has, the more likely that people are to be put off entering, thus greatly increasing the chances of a prize. But factor in the extra pressures of Christmas, and you could very soon have a win in your sights. The Marks & Spencer promotion especially seems to have captured the imagination of compers all over the land. Joe Public may well be left in the starting blocks by the need to place an order for Christmas food well in advance, and then to collect it from a specific store at a fixed time slot on just one day – December 22nd, and then to complete an entry form and tiebreaker which, at some branches, will only be handed out on the day itself… phew! Definitely worth all the effort given the number of £1,000 prizes at stake, but again it’s worth remembering that every ‘true’ comper worth his or her salt will have this one high on their own Christmas list. So while the quantity of entries will probably be relatively low, the quality most definitely won’t be.
A year rarely passes without us having to supply at least one Christmas themed tiebreaker. So it seems a good idea to remind everyone of the festive chestnuts that do the rounds at this time of year. Whatever your views on chestnuts for the other eleven months, in December everything is somehow different. As the entire country slides into one big tacky Christmas cliché in the name of tradition, it only seems polite to join in the jollity. Time pressures too make a Christmas chestnut somehow more acceptable. And given that Christmas is based on custom and habit for most of us, it seems only reasonable to make blowing the dust off of your “Bumper Book of Christmas Chestnuts” every year one of those family customs without which Christmas wouldn’t be complete. Some Christmas slogans may make you groan, then again so does that huge pudding after Christmas lunch that nobody can eat year after year… but you can imagine the uproar if ever it failed to appear. Christmas is all about familiarity and tradition, and there’s no reason why your Christmas tiebreakers shouldn’t follow suit – even with a heavy dose of irony and with tongue very firmly in cheek (or so you can claim, anyway)!
So, stuff the turkey and hang the holly, yule sleigh the judges in your quest for santa-rrific prizes that’ll give you plenty of Claus for celebration. Every one’s a cracker. Like mistletoe and wine, the product that you’re praising is always number one at Christmas time. And of course, you bought it at a supermarket where prices are never ding dong merrily on high. The stable prices and star value makes their store the inn place to go, for festive good cheer they never reign dear, and it goes without sleighing that they tend their flocks but never fleece them. Yule love their lo-lo-lo prices (which, incidentally, sleigh you and even make Scrooge smile), and it’s the very store where Santa always does his stocking up. Wise men travel there from afar too; indeed only a turkey would shop anywhere else. Sauces and gravy undoubtedly offer the condiments of the season, creams and butters go ding dong merrily on pie, and with that stuffing there’s no present like the thyme. The product about which you are enthusing invariably carries the most distinguished label on the festive table, is a great Christmas box (poles apart from ties and socks) and, hark those herald angels sing, at Christmas time it’s just the thing! In fact, you’re plum chuffed about it – and would be plum duffed without it.
I could go on, but don’t want to snow you under – I’m sure you get the idea! But if you would rather not join the doubtless hundreds of others piled on the chestnut bandwagon (or should that be sleigh?) as it teeters down the slippery slope, then there’s plenty of scope for you to adapt one of these clichés and make it your own. Even easier if your name is Carol, Holly, Ivy or Noel – praise the comping gods at this time of the year if you are so blessed! It’s all in a good Claus, after all.
An unashamed Christmas slogan works best when the judges too are in the festive spirit, so it’s best to use them in competitions that will be judged before the big day. I can think of nothing worse than having to judge thousands of jolly seasonal slogans on a cold, wet Monday in February, so always take the closing and notification dates into account when deciding how thick to pile on the festive cheer. And then sit back and wait for those Christmas prizes to start rolling in… a ritual which itself is another unique quirk in a comper’s calendar. A sure sign of Easter in a comping household is when the postman turns up with all of the hampers, crackers and decorations won in Christmas competitions. But that’s another story, and frankly who cares? A prize is a prize, after all!
Have fun with your Christmas comps, may your jingles ring the judges’ bells, and all your tiebreakers be crackers. And good luck not just in the forthcoming festive frenzy but in 2006 too. Have a very Merry Christmas, and may Santa bring you everything you wish for – with lots of postcards, envelopes and stamps thrown in for good measure, of course! Don’t forget too, that your Christmas cards can be recycled as postcards once the festivities are over, and even the wrapping from presents can be used to decorate entries in the future for those of you who like your entries to stand out from the crowd. Season’s greetings, and at this time of the year always remember… Comping is for life, not just for Christmas!
Smid x
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