THIS time of year brings out the Scrooge in me.

I love Christmas, but I can’t stand the four-months-in-advance over-played, sentimental festive adverts which play on a nauseatingly endless loop.

They make us all feel inadequate with their frosty, twinkly perfection.

Underneath my tendencies towards being a feminazi, Christmas brings out my inner domestic slave.

If I haven’t made a cake, with homemade marzipan and carefully crafted fondant icing, which is akin to brain surgery with its complexity to make, or my own whisky-steeped mincemeat and crumbly pastry, I feel like I’ve failed. I’m cringing at this admission.

But that’s what advertising does to you.

I have spent many a Christmas Day carefully balancing the cooking of a dinner for 14 people in an oven the size of an atom, packing relatives around the table so closely they can carefully study each other’s hair follicles.

I do hate Christmas adverts, but this year’s Waitrose effort warmed my icy heart.

Getting snowed in at a pub in the middle of nowhere on Christmas Day, with someone cooking for me, playing dominoes while anticipating turkey, sprouts and bread sauce, is my idea of heaven.

In the advert, the snow comes, gets deeper and deeper, and the customers are snowed in. Something is niggling though. I dislike Waitrose. First, because it is overpriced, second, because of the snobbery surrounding it, and third, because it’s too up itself to have any stores at all between Harrogate and Hexham.

They say you can spot the north-south divide by looking at the British map of Waitrose stores.

It’s true. Waitrose pulled out of Durham a few years ago, the only store in the whole county.

Which makes the Tan Hill advert even more ridiculous. Waitrose is using stunning images of remote Muker, in Swaledale, and Tan Hill, both places which are about as far away from one of their stores as it is possible to get.

I spent some time the other day – and this doesn’t make me proud –checking whether Waitrose delivered to the Tan Hill Inn. It doesn’t.

In fact, if you were at Tan Hill, you wouldn’t dream of getting your groceries from Waitrose.

The nearest store is in leafy Hexham, which is 120-mile round trip.

So while the Waitrose Christmas advert is lovely, while it makes me want to get snowed in at the Tan Hill Inn, it doesn’t make me want to shop at Waitrose.

It needs highlighting that the one place the chain has chosen to advertise its Christmas product - the most important time of its financial year – is using a beautiful, nostalgic, place to evoke the magic of the season.

But it’s an area that Waitrose has deemed too insignificant, too poor, too working class, to have a store.

I don’t care. I wouldn’t dream of shopping there. Us northeners are far too savvy.

Aldi is the new Waitrose. An entire week’s shopping for a family of four for £40 and you can even buy chargrilled artichoke hearts. I kid you not.