Clichés become clichés because they capture a new insight so instantly recognisable that everyone uses it until it becomes, well, a cliché. Sometimes, though, that original insight is worth revisiting.
Take the notion that we have forgotten the real meaning of Christmas. That's a cliché which always intrigues me, because the fact that we use it so often means that there is an archetypal Christmas tucked away somewhere in our collective cultural memory against which all our Christmases are measured.
Most of the time the reality is found wanting. What exactly is this "real meaning of Christmas" which people appear to yearn so fiercely for, despite being disappointed year after year? Did it ever exist? Is it related to that other great cliché, that Christmas is really only for children, which is usually spoken with a sigh which attests to permanent and tragic exile from a time of magic?
Christmas holds a pitiless magnifying mirror to what we are. If we are frantic and rushed all year long, Christmas becomes an unbearable strain added to an already overloaded soul. If we are locked in the numbness of depression or bereavement, Christmas is a reminder of the bleakness of our existence. If we are lucky enough to be part of resilient families, it becomes a time for gratitude for being so blessed, and a time to deepen the bonds which already give meaning and structure to our lives.
Resilient families are not perfect. They may, in the immortal words of the alien Stitch, of Disney's Lilo and Stitch, be "little and broken but still good". Or in the movie's other great insight, they may simply be the place "where no one gets left behind".
Some have knocked Lilo and Stitch for presenting a most non-traditional family as an ideal. A closer look reveals that it is very close to the traditional family, because people drive each other crazy, do destructive things and and yet still care passionately about each other and help each other grow. Come to think of it, the notion of having a family member from another planet is one with which many families can identify.
Our ideals about Christmas mean guilt is a frequent visitor. Feelings of guilt are to this generation what bad thoughts were to an earlier one, something which no decent person should be having, but a fact of life.
We seem to forget there is such a thing as healthy guilt, which signals discord between our beliefs and our actions. Guilt can be an incentive to do better, and is only unhealthy if we try to live up to standards of merciless perfection.
Some of us specialise in feeling enough guilt to inflict punishment on ourselves, but not enough to actually change. There is no alternative, we mutter, knowing that there are very, very few situations in life where this is completely true.
Take the guilt we feel because the reflection we see in the Christmas mirror shows us that our lives lack balance and order, and that we make headless chickens look calm.
Dr Edward Hallowell has written one of the best books on Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), titled Driven to Distraction. ADD is a much misunderstood syndrome which has a neurological basis. Once considered a disorder of childhood, we now know it continues into adulthood for many.
It may or may not be accompanied by hyperactivity, but among its characteristics are impulsiveness, distractibililty, a porous memory and difficulty with organisation which impinges on a person's quality of life on a daily basis. If you are ruminating ruefully that it sounds just like you, then you are ahead of me.
Dr Hallowell says the biggest two dangers with ADD are missing it completely and the opposite, overdiagnosis. It is hard to diagnose ADD accurately when we live in what he calls an ADD-ogenic society, where many of us act like we have ADD all the time.
This is the age of the soundbite, the fast cut, the clicking from channel to channel, of speed, of being present-centred with no future and no past. There is a constant search for high stimulation and an inability to create the structures which would channel the creative energy which is also characteristic of ADD.
We have an intolerance of quiet, a panicked feeling when confronted with time for reflection. No wonder ADD is difficult to recognise. The more "successful" a person is, the more likely they are to demonstrate these kinds of characteristic. If you are not madly busy or run off your feet, it is practically an admission of failure.
Yet something about Christmas makes us feel bad about constantly living this way. Perhaps it is because all our best memories of Christmas cluster around relationships, and living life at this pace is destructive of relationships.
Many people find themselves in churches at this time of year and are not really sure why they are there. Perhaps a person who was important to them brought them to church at Christmas. Or they want in some inchoate and inarticulate way to stand for a few moments with other people to acknowledge the fact that there is more to life than rush.
The stillness of crib figures, the depiction of the archetypal relationships which centre on a child, all whisper of something better to stressed and desperately hurried hearts.
It says something about the resilience of the Christmas story that it still has the quiet power to make us pause, in spite of the sometimes criminal weaknesses and flaws of the institutions entrusted with carrying on that story.
One of the most moving things said to me this year was by a survivor of clerical abuse. He told me bluntly that the way in which he was treated by the church was worse than the actual abuse. Then, later, he told me that he had returned to going to Mass regularly.
Seeing my bewilderment, he explained patiently that now that the church had been stripped of prestige and of power, the message was easier for him to hear. Which, come to think of it, may be as close as this columnist will get to the real meaning of Christmas.