Forget Band Aid, or Slade, the Christmas number ones that I’m interested in are the search engine chart toppers. By searching for "Christmas" in the big 3 engines (Google, MSN and Yahoo) you would think it would bring back heart warming, chestnut roasting results.
…and you’d be right. Top of Google’s results is www.northpole.com , a "family-oriented Christmas site for children and families to share together"- an oasis of festive frivolity. Yahoo counters that with the modern classic that is Wikipedia. Luckily Wikipedia doesn’t over promise and under-deliver with its hard facts- "Christmas is an annual holiday that celebrates the birth of Jesus". MSN however seems to have missed out on the Christmassy vibe, delivering NewsShopper at the top slot- it does have a picture of Santa- which is nice.
MSN (unsurprisingly) serves up Encarta Encyclopedia as a prefix to its rankings- with a big snippet that totally trumps Wikipedia’s feeble result- "Christmas Day did not officially come into being until c. 350 when Pope Julius I proclaimed December 25 as the date of the Nativity."- that is the kind of hardcore Christmas fact I didn’t know I could have lived without. MSN also provides "Christmas Milton Keynes" at number 6, from The Official Website Of Milton Keynes- the internet doesn’t get much better does it folks?
Google appears to be agnostic; MSN and Yahoo both have "BBC – Religion & Ethics – Christmas: The story of Christmas" at number 3, but Google doesn’t so much as mention the infant Christ or the Magi on the first page. It does provide the answer to a question I never thought needed asking "How Christmas Works"- fantastic. Sadly there is no mention of why Brussels sprouts are so utterly vile, so I feel a bit let down.
To be honest I am heartened by the fact the top slots are not jam-packed with purely commercial sites selling pointless Christmas tat- perhaps the internet has a lesson for us?
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