I’ve just sat through a YouTube compilation of the best Christmas ads of 2023. Golden, succulent turkeys. Novelty reindeer headbands and glittery dresses. Parties in expensive looking homes that go a bit wrong but, hey, who cares? Christmas doesn’t have to be perfect, right? Different ages, different races, different skin colours. All the same socio-economic profile, mind you: comfortably off homeowners throwing glitzy get-togethers in semi-detached houses that, once upon a time, might have been regarded as modest but would now list on Zoopla for well over a million quid.
Everyone’s happy and financially secure. The music is piano led and mournful to begin with but gradually builds towards something more upbeat and life affirming. People keep knocking at other people’s doors. There’s a great deal of CGI sparkle and magic in the air. One of the ads features a robin redbreast with advanced emotional sentience. Another features a raccoon. A raccoon in Britain? Seems a bit far fetched. But anything is possible at Christmas, I suppose.
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No two Christmases are the same, they seem to say. Maybe so, but almost all Christmas ads are identical.
When I was a kid this sort of smug portrayal of Christmas made me feel a bit left out. The whole ‘matching tartan jim-jams by the fireside and eggnog for everyone’ thing that advertisers were even peddling back in the ’80s just made most of us feel like Wayne and Waynetta Slob by comparison.
M&S did an ad this year that tries to tell us “it’s OK to ditch the traditions and do the holidays however you like”. But even in their supposedly anarchic and lawless depictions of Christmas, everyone’s still famous, done up to the nines, surrounded by gourmet grub and eating with matching silverware.