Festive tears are hard to avoid, but let’s not get rid of Christmas joy

While working at home the other day, I was interrupted by the sound of a man crying. Properly bawling in baritone sobs. I looked up to find my husband stood over me, shoulders juddering, pointing at the screen of his smartphone. “It’s … the new … John Lewis ad,” he hiccuped, stretching out his arms for a hug.

You don’t have to be a parent to suffer from sentimentality (dictionary definition: “exaggerated and self-indulgent tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia”), but it definitely helps.

Since the birth of our first child 11 years ago, my husband and I have hardly gone a week without succumbing to mawkish tears. Songs that I used to scorn with chilly good taste – The Wind Beneath Your Wings, or The Greatest Love of All – now wring me out like a flannel. Christmas number ones, school assemblies or television programmes featuring family reunions: if it has the emotional depth and range of a Hallmark card, I’m in.

Advertising companies, knowing that parents have this design flaw, have fashioned a whole yuletide tradition out of it. The winner of the annual Christmas advert battle is decided not by how many robot dinosaurs it sells, but by the volume of tears it produces. Even the BBC joins in this festival of schmaltz. But as this year’s effort shows, chasing tears can lead you into trouble.

The BBC’S new advert, entitled Wonderland, has caused outrage among the keyboard warriors of Mumsnet. It features a harassed working mother and a teenage son who wants more of her time. The action switches from the office, where Mum is tapping furiously at her keyboard, to the local seafront, where Son is idling about on his own and (the first sign of delinquency) playing arcade games. Suddenly, magically, time stops. Mum is able to flee the office, weaving her way past frozen co-workers, and rush to the boy’s side for an afternoon of quality time. They play on the dodgems, eat candyfloss, cuddle and share tender glances. Happiness is restored.

So, in short: working mothers neglect their children and send them off the rails; the responsibilities of parenting lie entirely with women (the father figure in the advert appears only fleetingly); and you’d need a genuine miracle to pull off a satisfactory work-life balance. You can see why the mums are cross.

These are all things we mothers worry about constantly. Such anxieties have no place in a Christmas ad. Sentimental tears are enjoyable because they only contain a slight truth. Actual sadness is just – well, sad.

Has George West, 91, solved the housing crisis? The former architect is selling his home in London for £1million less than the market price, on the condition that he can live there until he dies. The house is on the market for £2.7million – mere shrapnel by Chelsea standards, but enough to fund the care he needs to live out his days at home. “Whoever buys it buys me as well.”

The viager system – buying a property complete with an ancient resident – is common in France. More transparent than equity release, it would give Britain’s asset-rich pensioners some money to play with. They could use it to pay for a more comfortable old-age, or to help their children on to the property ladder. Or they could spend it on drugs and loose women, die fast and make their new landlords happy. Everyone’s a winner!

FOLLOW Jemima Lewis on Twitter @gemimsy; READ MORE at telegraph.co.uk/opinion