Hey

The only one i have heard recently is other day is Alfie saying 'This is gonna be the Best Christmas Walford has ever had!'

Which basically means he doomed Walford to have a terrible christmas like every year

If a family's due to be torn apart on Christmas day ala Kat and Alfie/the Brannings, they'll spend December planning the best Christmas ever. Along the way there'll be plenty of lines such as 'I'm not going anywhere', 'Over my dead body' or 'I just want a quiet family Christmas'.

Someone will be murdered

In the run up to Christmas, residents' homes will be devoid of decoration one day, and then the next appear fully decorated with dozens of cards prominently on display (is there a rule in soapland where you must all post Christmas cards at the same time so they arrive on the same day decorations are put up?)

Also, presents are usually boxes with lids also wrapped separately - no tearing involved, just lift off the lid.

BIB I love I also remember adding last year that family members only ever give on individual gift to their family members, never the hundreds of little 'stocking fillers', nick-nacks and general bits of rubbish that the rest of the world has to wade through on Christmas day

Someone will receive a new item of technology as a gift, leading to hilarious or disastrous consequences.

If someone tries to convince you not to open your gift, just as your about to, what's in there is not gonna be pretty and you won't like it.

Nice thread btw

Or other box shaped presents are wrapped with a bow on top.

Also no matter how many people are at the table, all the chairs that everyone is sitting on are all the same make and are the same height. There are no tall stool type seats or chairs that are too low to reach the table which would happen in real life as people would have to bring their own chairs or borrow the neighbours to accommodate.

that the children are not allowed to open there present until after having xmas dinner

please if i tried to enforce this rule on my kids there would be riots

If someone's having an affair (and when isn't there?) they'll invariably get the presents for spouse/lover mixed up.

The same is true for the dishes, cutlery etc. Does everybody in soapland have +12 identical plates, glasses etc?

On a similar theme, someone will have an xmas cooking disaster - burnt turkey, forgot to put the oven on etc - so they will go round the neighbours who will have more than enough food to feed 10 unexpected guests as well as chairs/cutlery for them all to use/sit on.

Not to mention one of the people arriving will more than likely be having an affair/had a one night stand with someone already in the house.

One of the characters will have acquired a live turkey which they are planning to eat on the big day but when the moment comes to slaughter it they are seen chasing the turkey around the street/square/village trying to catch it. They then become so attached to the turkey that they can't bring themselves to kill it after all.

and even if the turkey is dead it will not be prepared.99.9% of people buy a turkey from a supermarket which you can just shove in the oven. It will not have feathers on it.

Cooking a turkey is just the same as cooking anything, but for some reason there will be a turkey disaster, either forgetting to turn the oven on or leaving the oven on too long. This does of course mean that next door neighbours who normally hate each other will have to share a Christmas dinner .

Everybody is squashed together leaving a nice big gap for the cameras to shoot through. Not just Christmas - they do this every time there is a table with people sitting at it.

and if one of their parents/friends is having an affair, said piece of technology will be instrumental in the revelation of it.

It appears most of the time to be a soap rule to disclose what the gift actually is before even handing it over to the recipient to be unwrapped, or as someone quite rightly pointed out earlier, lift off the lid! Not just christmas either, same with birthdays. No surprises allowed when it comes to comes to gifts in soap

It is highly likely that an inevitable budding romance will suddenly flourish underneath a strategically placed sprig of mistletoe instead of those involved just telling eachother like normal people!

On Corrie there is always a joke involving turkeys or Christmas trees (such as Chesney last year)

It will snow even though most of us haven't seen a white christmas in years.

A choir will pop up out of nowhere, intense drama will be unfolding as this music is incidentally played out over each scene.

Hahaha this is so true! We usually have about 16 people round my mum's for dinner on Xmas Day and there is usually a complete mish-mash of chairs for people to sit on. In soap world this never happens. Usually as well, any drama that happens in soaps is always before Xmas dinner as well. They usually sit down to eat and then it all kicks off....never after!

Boxing Day morning will feature hung over people in the cafe eating a full breakfast. By lunchtime they will be over the pub knocking back booze like its going out of style.

They just seem to swap the plots alternate years .... stolen/infested xmas trees one year, stolen/infected turkeys the next.

I wonder whether they're breaking this pattern this year?