Doctor Who, which topped the festive iPlayer charts for the last two years, slipped to ninth spot with 1m requests during a nine-day period over Christmas, according to figures published by the BBC on Wednesday.
So while this year hasn't managed to live up to the last's festive treats – we've had a free-to-download Christmas EP from Olly Murs, a Mariah-lite warble from Ariana Grande and even the mooted Saturdays Christmas album has been reduced to just one track – we do now have a new, jingle bell-assisted composition from Bonnie McKee.
The squatters took over the vacant building earlier this week and planned to provide a free festive lunch to homeless people on Christmas Day in protest at the housing crisis.
That VHS copy, replete with festive network idents and region-specific adverts, means I relived Boxing Day 1989 a hundred times over in the weeks, months and years that followed.
As I weighed up the knock-off Baileys in Aldi this past weekend, news emerged that magnums and methulselahs (equivalent to 50 glasses – I didn't know, either) of champagne have become a supermarket trend for the festive season and a requisite for those attempting to cultivate the campest of all Christmases.
This week, that's included a sprightly Christmas album recorded in 1956 by US organist Richard Ellsasser and an enormously evocative series of festive 78s made in the 1930s by American children's entertainer Ireene Wicker.
Doctor Who, in which Peter Capaldi's Time Lord met Santa Claus, played by Nick Frost, was down 2 million viewers on last year, when the festive special was watched by 8.3 million, boosted by Matt Smith's farewell in the lead role.
Top Gear took two of the top three spots in a festive iPlayer top 10 which also featured the first part of the Miranda finale, The Apprentice final, David Walliams' adaptation The Boy in the Dress and four episodes of EastEnders, including the Christmas Day edition.
Each morning, Mirvish gave away "gifts" to the first few customers through the doors (to this day, a determined and shivering few line up at 6am on the corner of Bloor and Bathurst to claim their free tuning fork or toaster), as well as dollar bills to the poor and turkeys before Thanksgiving and Christmas.
"Most of those for the Thanksgiving supply have already been grown and are in good supply – and most have already been contracted for with wholesalers for the retail market".
Over at Stubby's House of Christmas (stubbyschristmas.com) the focus is more modern, with the North Carolina-based blogger sifting through this year's crop of festive releases.
