Rant: Holiday Posts Are The Yellow Tail of Blogging

Easter was yesterday and if you have been reading wine blogs, you probably would have found a number of posts recommending wines for Easter dinner, such as wines to pair with ham or lamb.  Every holiday, from New Year's Eve to Thanksgiving, numerous wine blogs, as well as print media, offer their wine recommendations. Such posts and articles are ubiquitous, and often very repetitive from year to year.  Originality is usually lacking so why do people continue to write these trite posts?

Holiday posts are the Yellow Tail of blogging.

Like Yellow Tail wine, holiday posts are usually simple, standardized and consumer friendly. You don't seek brilliance in Yellow Tail and you don't seek it either in most holiday posts.  Like Yellow Tail, holiday posts are not intended for the more sophisticated wine lover, but rather to help those people who know little about wine and want some assistance. For most bloggers, these posts are easy to write, simply placing down some standard wine recommendations. And as they write these same posts every year, the posts are usually consistent from year to year, "vintage" having no input into the posts.

The main reason bloggers write these articles is the same reason many wine stores sell Yellow Tail: to appeal to the masses.  As trite as these holiday wine articles may be, they still garner lots of traffic and many bloggers want all of that extra traffic. With at least one holiday each month, and sometimes multiple holidays, writing these posts is an easy way to increase traffic. And as they are trying to appeal to the masses with these holiday posts, bloggers are usually motivated to write something simple and basic. The masses are not seeking something complex, no matter how compelling.     

Some blogs see no reason to write holiday posts, and are not motivated by the desire of the additional traffic. This would be like the boutique wine store which chooses not to stock Yellow Tail or similar such products,  Or if they do write holiday posts, they strive for originality, to elevate their posts beyond the trite and commonplace. That is certainly a more difficult task.  Such posts are directed more to wine lovers than the masses, though even the masses could benefit from such articles. It is just less likely that the masses will read those posts.

So is writing the same old holiday wine posts selling out? Or a necessary evil to attract more traffic? Should wine bloggers seek to write more original holiday posts, even at the expense of not garnering as much traffic?  How do you feel about these holiday wine posts? Am I being too harsh to compare them to Yellow Tail? Or did I not go far enough?