'Tis the Season

(GETTY IMAGES/Peter Macdiarmid)

And watch. And read. And listen.

End of year lists or compilations and formulaic news coverage are as much a part of this season as egg nog and concerns about "The War on Christmas."

Over at PR Week Hamilton Nolan observed that the ritual of end-of-year lists is in full swing already:

Birdwatching magazines do it. Beekeeping magazines do it. Even, yes, PRWeek does it. As the end of the year approaches, magazines of all stripes spew forth lists covering every possible lens through which one could view our world. Looks back. Looks forward. Predictions, analyses, bests and worsts, most notable people, places, things, events, products, gadgets, guns, and gewgaws.

Everyone from media critics to casual readers has grumbled about the profusion of these lists as long as they've been published.

But unlike the proliferation of summertime lists – which serve as cover for vacationing reporters – the end of year lists make an amount of intellectual sense.

Just as some of us take stock of the day as we lay down to sleep or how we may look backwards with champagne-infused nostalgia on New Year's Eve, end-of-year lists speak to our instinct to put things in order before we toss them into the mental attic for posterity.

Heck, the biggest media ritual of them all -- Time's "Person of the Year" – is nothing if not the result of ranking the year's biggest stories and anointing the biggest one with the distinction. (Click here if you've forgotten my pick.)

But on the topic of how trite-bordering-upon-formulaic some stories tend to be this year, I can't really improve upon the "Holiday Hack Newsroom Bingo" game, featuring seasonal staples like: