Incredibly, Christmas – a festival in which a creepy old man labelled a saint by much of society dons outlandish clothing and promises to make children's dreams come true by sneaking silently into their homes at night – hasn't been cancelled in the wake of Savilegate. Nor are Britain's high-street retailers seeking to distance themselves from it. Quite the opposite in fact: they're openly advertising their enthusiasm for the yuletide period. It's a recipe for disaster come the inevitable public inquiry, currently scheduled for 2018. Still, in the meantime, we can enjoy their commercials for what they are: bullshit.

First up, John Lewis, the store that made headlines in 2011 with a weepy fable about a kiddywink counting the minutes until he could horrify his parents with a gift-wrapped dog's head in a box. This year's effort is a stab at romance. It starts with a snowman falling in love with a snowgirl. She smiles, but she's not really reciprocating. Hey, maybe she's frigid.

Undeterred, our "hero" goes on an epic journey to the shops to buy his cold, inexpressive partner a gift. We've all been there. Since he can't move on his own, old snowbollocks presumably needs to be dismantled and rebuilt literally hundreds of times along the route, most likely by children, which makes the whole thing a disgraceful celebration of child labour. And at Christmas too. Unforgivable.

Anyway, without so much as a "thank you" to the underage slave army that made his expedition possible, selfish Mr Snowman eventually makes it back, and presents his snowy goddess with a new pair of gloves and a hat – a gesture that warms her heart, although not quite enough to make her tits melt off. Fortunately, the advert ends just before he clumsily attempts to mount her like a donkey, which is just as well since being made of snow, she can surely only be a few days old at the most. And we've all had enough paedogeddon for one year.

The snowman's quest is accompanied by a fey, irritating cover version of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's The Power of Love, in which Holly Johnson is replaced by a breathy chanteuse whimpering at the piano like a dog that needs taking for a walk. A similar fate befalls B&Q's Christmas ad, which opts for a fey, irritating cover version of Our House by another breathy chanteuse. Clearly advertisers aren't going to stop doing this until they have destroyed every 80s anthem ever recorded. At which point they'll roll up their sleeves and start on the 90s. It's sobering to think that at some point during our lifetimes we'll be subjected to a twinkly girl-and-piano cover version of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine's Sheriff Fatman. But we will. Eventually, we will.

Waitrose, for its part, has made a point of releasing a bare-bones ad in which Delia Smith and Heston Blumenthal stand in an empty studio, claiming the big-hearted supermarket giant has decided to give some of the money that would have gone on a glitzy advert to charity. A noble sentiment, only slightly undermined by the massive TV advertising spend required to bring this sacrifice to our attention. Sod the charity work, I'm just relieved they didn't blow any cash on a Katie Melua cover of Holding Back the Years.

Sticking with supermarkets, Iceland, at least, has the decency to use the original recording of Gene Wilder singing Pure Imagination from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to soundtrack its Christmas ad. Unfortunately, the visuals don't quite match up. We see a little girl wide-eyed with delight as she enters a magical kingdom filled with Iceland's range of demented Christmas edibles, bastard experiments that, as ever, look and sound uniquely unappetising. You know the sort of thing. Curried lasagne tacos. Pork and pink lemonade profiteroles. Salted caramel salmon tampons. It's the stuff of "imagination" all right. Clive Barker's imagination.

But at least Iceland is attempting to reinvent food as we know it, which demonstrates forward thinking. Other supermarkets seem lodged in the past. The ad campaigns for both Asda and Morrisons celebrate the stereotypical long-suffering housewife slaving away unassisted for hours to keep the family fed and watered at Christmas – her sole eventual reward being the vague glow of a job well done as she watches the rest of the family basking in front of the telly like boneless hippos, silently farting warm bumfuls of gravy-infused methane into the atmosphere during the ad breaks in A Very Downton Christmas. In this world, wives are meek-but-cheerful servants (Asda mum doesn't even get a proper chair to sit on during Christmas lunch; she has to perch at the side like a terrier begging for scraps) while their husbands are lazy, oblivious arseholes. Even Don Draper might offer to peel the spuds, for Christ's sake. But no. Not in these ads. If they celebrated Christmas in Saudi Arabia, it might look a bit like this. Except for the bit where she drives to the shops, obviously.

Charlie Brooker's new book I Can Make You Hate is available for £10.99 (rrp £16.99) with free UK p&p from the Guardian Bookshop. Visit guardianbookshop.co.uk or call 0330 333 6846