It is Christmas-ad season, the first box on the advent calendar, in which you can see a picture of Jesus, Mary and Joseph writing a letter to The Irish Times to complain about the early onset of Christmas ads. “Sir, we are barely out of Halloween and what do I see?” the letter begins. It ends with an obscure reference to the 2005 Fianna Fáil ardfheis. To mark the season we are, once again, assessing these promotional films for weepiness, capitalism, gluttony and liturgical correctness. You will notice over the course of this article that some of the advertisers are English retailers with no outlets here. At The Irish Times we still respect the union.
John Lewis
After years in which it consistently won the Christmas-ad arms race by making us cry at animals, cute children and melancholy old people, John Lewis has finally made an ad that references the true liturgical meaning of Christmas: dread Cthulhu. It starts with a small, suspiciously 1970s-looking child purchasing a card-sized box containing the seed for “the Perfect Christmas Tree” from a mysterious bric-a-brac stall. He plants the seed because he is unaware of the history of British horror literature – and to the alarm of his family it slowly grows into a betentacled, multiheaded, seemingly sentient Venus flytrap thing (seriously) that he insists on decorating and having in place of a humble pine tree until it tries to eat the dog and a lot of their stuff. They put it in the garden, where, as time progresses, they begin giving this unholy tentacled vision offerings. It eats, unwraps and spits the contents back at them. “Let your traditions grow” is the tagline, by which they presumably mean the tradition of giving tribute to the Old Gods. I guess the secularisation of Christmas was always headed in this direction. Anyway, praise Cthulhu. (My wife insists this is just a parody of Little Shop of Horrors, but I know what I saw.)
Marks & Spencer
For more eldritch horror, Dawn French, now a plastic fairy atop a Christmas tree, has given sentience to two discarded reindeer-themed mittens who now have the voices of the American actors and football-club owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. “I’m alive!” one of them declares in horror. Then French shows them the wonders of Marks & Spencer’s Christmas food range – turkeys, mince puddings, Brussels sprouts and such. This must be an exquisite torture for them, given that they don’t have digestive systems or, if they do have digestive systems, those systems are made out of wool. “Here’s a feast fit for a mitten,” she says to taunt them, for they know they are damned.
Aldi
Speaking of things that shouldn’t exist, monstrous yule tuber* Kevin the Carrot is back with his dead eyes and his slit for a mouth, ready to luxuriate in the murder and consumption of his friends, who are also foodstuffs. This year they are troubling the estate of Roald Dahl with a chestnut-themed industrialist named William Conker. He is doing some legacy planning and is giving Kevin and some other hapless vegetables a guided tour of his factory of death, in which other foodstuffs are turned into delicious meals. Over the course of this tour some of the group are smothered, crushed and drowned for being, variously, grumpy, greedy and demanding. Finally Conker sees something in the dead eyes of Kevin and gives him the factory, which Kevin, the weird freak, embraces. “Share the love this Christmas” comes up on the screen, and I truly know fear.
Patrick Freyne: My favourite corporate psy-ops of the season – or Christmas ads, as they’re called in the suburbs
Doctor Odyssey’s core message: just imagine Pacey from Dawson’s Creek holding you tight and saying, ‘Shhh, it’s okay’
Rivals: The thrusting bum is intercut with spurting soap and overflowing champagne. We are in safe, if filthy, hands
The 2 Johnnies – what you get if you feed Ant and Dec a Tayto sandwich after midnight – are taunting us now
*I don’t care that carrots aren’t technically tubers. They can’t talk either. And they famously hate Christmas.
Lidl
A raccoon emerges from a box holding a Christmas hat. Then, for inexplicable reasons, he takes an interest in the affairs of man. Specifically, he wishes to return a lost toy monkey to a tousle-haired youngster. This is a thankless task during which he is, confusingly, chased and then befriended by a gaslighting dog. The ad concludes with the raccoon living in a hollow tree regretting his choices. Look, there are worse fates. If this were an Aldi ad it would have ended with Kevin the Carrot eating him.
Boots
A child is convinced that Santa – the Santa, possibly the most powerful and famous man on the planet – needs a present from her. She definitely goes to an Educate Together. She is indulged in this delusion by her doting mother rather than encouraged, instead, to do business studies at UCD. And so they begin a journey north from Boots via car, truck, train, trawler, plane and sled, during which they pay their way with Boots products – seemingly a viable currency in Britain now thanks to inflation. Eventually they reach Santa’s polar hideaway, where the mother climbs on to Santa’s roof and drops a present – unwrapped Boots flight socks – down the chimney while the child gleefully gives her a thumbs-up. This is technically a crime, and I’m glad the ad ends before Santa comes out with his gun.
Asda
First there was a teaser ad in which three Asda employees wandered joyfully through an aggressively Christmassy shop only to discover, in an obscure and darkened storeroom, the cheddary Canadian crooner Michael Bublé singing “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!” presumably to keep himself warm. It is a measure of how confused and desperate the Christmas-ad rush has become that “Ha! We have Michael Bublé and we keep him in the dark!” has become a reasonable yuletide offering. Soon there is a second ad in which it appears that, in fact, Bublé is running the whole Asda operation and goes on a gluttonous tour of the store. Get a grip on yourself, Bublé.
Amazon
Over a funereal piano version of In My Life by The Beatles, three oldsters are inspired to order sleds and helmets from the dark and Satanic Amazon distribution hubs. Then they glide down the hill in the type of Christmassy snow that now counts as science fiction, in the process transforming into youthful versions of themselves. Ironically, Amazon owner Jeff Bezos’s true method for recapturing his youth most likely involves getting blood infusions from the children of his ununionised workforce. Or possibly having his head attached to a digger.
Coca-Cola
“Anyone can be Santa,” sings a sugary voice as we are immersed in a world in which everyone is literally a version of that rotund redistributive housebreaker. Santas hang on to fire engines and ride skateboards and serve other Santas meals in diners, all the while perpetrating acts of generosity that include offering other Santas their last Coke Zero. (This feels like body-shaming, TBH.) A world in which older white dudes dominate everything probably isn’t as counterintuitive as the creators believe. Indeed, I was just about to write an essay called The Lot of the Common Santa Under Socialism when everything reverted to the non-Santa world of normal human beings, who are also, the ad suggests, capable of generosity. That’s the twist. Then Santa himself, the real one, can be seen grinning behind the wheel of a huge, gas-guzzling Coca-Cola truck. He hates the environment very much.
