Matthew Reed: fancy breaking out of the mould this Christmas?

What are you doing for Christmas this year? Same as usual or something totally different? Let me guess – you wish it could be the latter, but the festive season invariably involves us following the pre-ordained ping-pong between in-laws, waiting until after we’ve all had too much of each other to scuttle back home or off to the sales to take back that stuff that we didn’t want and buy something else that we don’t need. I love Christmas. It brings out the best in us. Really.

But listen up people – we don’t have to toe the line and endure the same old clichéd Christmas routine year in year out.

It’s like Matt Cardle winning The X Factor. At least Wagner was a bit different (I’m joking … and ducking!). Matt might be able to hold a tune, but the nature of the programme is to create a ‘product’. A saleable package with mass appeal. So he’d better not sing his own songs, or break out of that melancholic musing mould he’s been cast into, and let’s be clear, we don’t want anything too different.

The problem with Christmas I think, is that it’s too regular, but too infrequent. A year is just long enough to forget that you don’t actually like turkey, yet the minute that flaccid grey lump of dried-out protein hits the plate, you wish you’d gone for something different. I wonder if that’s how all those ‘zany people’ who kept voting for Ann Widdecombe felt when week after week, she lumbered back onto the Strictly stage clad in yellow lycra or sequined culottes to anchor Anton to the floor as he valiantly attempted dance alchemy?

People like rituals and Christmas provides an opportunity to do something different from the previous 364 days – only it just so happens to be exactly the same as 366 days ago, which I must admit, is quite comforting. Yet again this year, there’s the added frisson of whether or not it’ll be a white Christmas. Which is only right for a nation so defined by precipitation. This year I’ve already heard that the snow’s ‘in the bag’. So where’s the fun in that?

I wonder how we’d actually cope if we had to do something totally different? Like being somewhere hot for Christmas? We could still preoccupy ourselves with the weather, but it just wouldn’t be the same, would it? Exactly!

You could try to roast a bird the size of the family dog in a scorching hot oven, drape yourself in tinsel and stick a crepe paper crown on your profusely perspiring head … plenty do. But why not absent yourself from tradition and barbecue a ’roo instead!

So, what am I doing for Christmas? Well I’m either going to be cruising along Route 66 in a classic Porsche 911 with the warm wind in my ‘close crop’ or I’ll be on the M3 in the snow with a stomach as full as the boot (which is stacked with mini aftershave sets – damn those 3 for 2s), reaching for the Rennie and vowing never again.

Whether you’re doing the same as usual or something totally different, all the best from me and the PowerPlace team and here’s to 2011!

Matthew Reed is chief executive of Power Place.