Christmas is going to get weird
If you've seen The Sopranos you'll know it's unwise to go near an open flame wearing satin.

Christmas is going to get weird

My first job was on the shopfloor at a major high street retailer, over the Christmas-Boxing Day sales period. Picture it: the first proper winter of the Great Recession, 5am, Mariah Carey pumping out of wall-mounted speakers.

People get a bit charged up at Christmastime. Their usual inhibitions left behind, they scatter unwanted clothes on the floor. They barge in the queue. They're rude to sixteen year-olds who don't know where the pyjamas are kept. The old Roman festival of Saturnalia (December 17, mark it in your diaries) had commoners nominate a king for the day, in a ritual role-swap between pleb and patrician; the British version of this is suburbanites shoplifting on Boxing Day while teenage workers watch.

I was useless as a retail worker - total dead weight, let's be honest - but the job taught me two things. The people working behind tills are saints. Secondly, an irrational hatred of Christmas songs. You would too, if you'd heard Slade, Wizzard and Mariah on a loop for two weeks.

The reason I mention this is because the first Xmas ads are out in the UK. My colleague Amy Houston has written about work from Asda, Walmart, Lidl, Shelter, Coca-Cola and many more.

The annual effort from Marks & Spencer has caught a bit of heat. M&S was one of the advertisers that made the season a real premium event in the marketing world, after it did those slow-mo spots with Santana and gravlax.

How things have changed. People aren't happy with Fleetwood Mac and a video of a pudding any more. They want Christmas ads to uphold decency, hard work and patriotism.

An open letter penned by Katharine Birbalsingh, known as 'Britain's strictest headteacher' by the papers, takes them to account for this deficit. She says the latest M&S effort - the one with Tan France and Sophie Ellis-Bextor - sticks "two fingers up" to "values of decency" taught in schools, and that M&S has a "duty as our national department store to keep the spirit of Christmas alive."

She writes: "When our nation is on its knees, trying to keep our spirits high, this is not the time for you to encourage people to ignore the inspirational spirit of self-sacrifice, gratitude..." and so on. Here's the full letter - though I don't recommend scanning down the comments, given what looked to me like QAnon theorists discussing its semiotic content in the replies.

Her position is that M&S, a company which has only sold food for what, less than 20 years, and is primarily known as a supplier of nice jumpers, is now a guardian of the very spirit of Britain's Christmas. Archbishop, make way for the deli counter assistant.

Putting the weirdness of that aside, here's a thought. There are fewer collective experiences available in our society now. Church attendance is down, we're all watching different TV shows, all hanging out in different subreddits. So, the spaces that remain - even if they are as prosaic as a Christmas commercial - take on even more importance socially and politically.

Hence, I think, the rush to assume M&S was sending a coded message about the Israel-Hamas war in a Xmas ad teaser. Hence the open letters from Tory kite-flyers.

So, despite rumours that John Lewis might try to downplay the importance of its Christmas spot (diminishing returns, etc), I think they'll only continue to grow in importance among audiences. And advertisers and agencies are going to be able to exercise even less control over how they're received.

Pretend you are working by reading these articles

Craig Sanderson

Freelance Creative Director / Creative Lead / Art Director - I make ads and the stuff that surrounds them.

1 年

I may be the Unbreakable to your Mr Glass in terms of liking Christmas songs. As an Argos employee for multiple Christmasses as well as a stint in an indie music shop I had more than my fair share of the same 12 songs played on repeat for weeks. Despite that I am a Christmas song fan and have been known to hum them in the summer absent mindedly. God rest ye merry gentle Sam. ??????

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