Choices - The Psychology of "too much".

French supermarkets at Christmas-time are irresistibly mesmerising. Perhaps it’s the seasonal theatre of it all - quarries of oysters; gentlemanly rows of sincere-looking Champagnes, serious wines that require a quick chat before being chosen. Stockpiles of chocolate logs arranged like artillary ordanance. Or maybe it’s simply the Star Wars scale of the Hypermarché itself, which in December feels less like a shop and more like an obstacle course in Oz. "It's ok, I've got this".. shouts my trusty trolley."Let there be choice". Is Decembers mantra, and there is most certainly much of that. It is an absolute playground of plenty. Which delivers us neatly at the kerb to look at exactly that: our choices.

The shift towards picking out our preferences has increased to eye-watering proportions, especially at the visual buffet that is Christmas. But not just there. From consumer products to career opportunities, we are overwhelmed with decisions. Some of this is positive - driven by health choices, seasonality, ethical or lifestyle alternatives and of course, considerations around our purchasing power. But much of it is decidely negative, both in terms of our subjective wellbeing and overall happiness. We often hear population-splitting, divisive aphorisms that start "There are two kinds of people in this world.." and indeed there are many subsets of this nature, up the ying-yang. The illustration I am going to use is a division between "maximisers" and "satisficers" - Maximising is when your goal is to choose the absolute best. Maximisers need assurance that every purchase or decision was the best they could have made. They are our steady middle-roaders and researchers - the buyers of "Which?" magazines. Satisficing, in contrast, means your goals is to choose something that is simply “good enough”. Satisficers apply criteria and standards to their decisions— once they find something that meets those standards, they’ll stop. In their defence, Satisficers can still have high standards — they just don’t worry about the possibility that there might be a better option out there once they’ve found something that meets their applied imperatives. (Note: Chances are, you are currently deciding which one you are, and assigning a value judgement to where you are on the relevant type-scale.)

Christmas is where the old Maximiser vs Satisficer divide starts to glow under the fairy lights.

Maximisers want the best of everything: the perfect Champagne, the worlds most thoughtful gift, the cake that whispers “I am your destiny.” They scroll the socials for scores on figgy pudding and painstakingly unwrap reviews of other peoples Christmas past. They do ribbon research.

Satisficers, meanwhile, settle comfortably on an identical festive menu, find a satisfactory solution for each culinary option, and get on with their lives — often with more inner peace and a better night’s sleep.

I am firmly in the Satisficer camp. Vanessa - with her individual designer’s instinct for presence, not perfection - is naturally a Maximiser. And as Barry Schwartz points out in The Paradox of Choice, that fact will probably make my life a little easier than hers. Maximisers, God bless them, one and all, struggle the most during holiday season: overthinking, over-searching, second-guessing, in a laudable attempt to create a Christmas that is not just meaningful but somehow optimal.

But Christmas wasn’t built to be optimal - "Mary and I will take a suite at the Inn". Christmas was just meant to be navigable - "We'll be totally fine with the stable". Perhaps we need to "attack" Christmas less and accept it a bit more. Let us not be a slave to the choices, even though in France, we struggle with that, having at least one cheese for every day of the year. But it's not about the numbers here, we could choose to imporve our relationship to choice. Christmas will just unfold as it wants to, or its meant to. Not because every detail is perfect, but because people show up, share food, and sit at a table together. Maybe that’s the antidote to the season’s classic overwhelm.

Choice isn’t the enemy. Excess isn’t either. The danger lies in believing that more choice requires more perfection — or more pressure, or more performance. The real freedom of the holidays is to care deeply, by treading lightly. Sometimes the most generous thing you can give yourself is permission to stop looking for the ultimate version of everything. To choose something lovely - not chase "perfect" - and trust that it’s enough. To gleefully buy a nice-looking Christmas pud without analysing the fruit-to-cake ratio on Reddit.

In short, full-on Xmas maximising can make you miserable. Net increases in choice - at least as far as the tinsel aisle stretches - are going to feel unhealthy and unhelpful. My new bestie, Barry Schwartz, goes on in his book, to proclaim that choice can improve the quality of our lives, by way of a few "essentials" of wellbeing, like control and autonomy; and "that restricting choice will inevitably deny someone the opportunity to get something they personally value". Yet he does colclude that even if we consider choice and autonomy good things, it doesn't necessarily follow that more choice, is always more bestly. As the Donald might Trumpet...

Too much Christmas choice can overwhelm us and paradoxically lead to less control, not more. The key to the door, according to Bazzer, is to make good choices about the things that really matter and to not be overly concerend about things that don't. Subjective enough? Excellent.

So perhaps that’s the quiet lesson tucked between the endive and the emmental: France’s Hypermarket aisles aren’t just overflowing with options — they’re inviting us to rethink our relationship with them. Choice, it turns out, isn’t the villain, nor is it the hero; it’s simply the backdrop against which we decide how much mental real estate we’re willing to hand over to the jam section. Whether you’re a dyed-in-the-wool Christmas Maximiser or a breezy Yuletide Satisficer (or, like most of us, a wobbly hybrid, depending on the day), the real freedom lies in knowing when to care… and when to casually toss the best looking marzipan into the trolley and move on with your life. In the end, a little conscious indifference might be the sanest Christmas choice of all.

Happy Holidays...