Irish Examiner View: Discerning the shape of Christmas present

It's easy to deride seasonal TV adverts, but there's a poetry about some of these mini dramas that is entirely apt for our age

Ebanana Scrooge is one of Aldi's new characters in the retailer's 2021 seasonal advertising campaign, 'A Christmas Carrot'. Picture: Aldi/PA

With 42 days to go until Christmas Day, with inflation ripping past 5% and set to reach its highest level for 14 years, and with coronavirus infection again sweeping across parts of Western Europe, what are we to make of the contemporary clutch of TV advertisements and the cultural narrative they present?

These campaigns are aimed at instilling some Christmas spirit and spending appetite in us all — despite those regular warnings about supply chain shortages.

Last year, advertising references to the pandemic — some subtle, some not so subtle — were everywhere, with one of the most poignant from Amazon featuring a young ballet dancer rehearsing by herself on a city apartment roof with the theme “the show must go on”. But, despite all the prognostications to the contrary, the dream builders of 2021 are envisaging less sadness and frustration and a swing back to normality (and not the “new normal” either) with time spent with friends and family in a happy place. In industry parlance, the decision has been to “go big”. 

TK Maxx’s 'Christmas to the Maxx' features a teenage boy at a festive talent show in a village hall determined, Jerry Lee Lewis-style, that 2021 will not be the poor, pale, subdued thing of 12 months earlier.

Not a dry eye in the house

John Lewis, usually a benchmark for seasonal advertising, tells the story of a fashionably androgynous alien girl stranded ET-style and making friends with an earthling boy in a nod to diversity and the magical power of friendship held together by the ‘80s hit ‘Together in Electric Dreams’. Not a product to be seen, and not a dry eye in the house.

Aldi has released 'A Christmas Carrot' starring Ebanana Scrooge with a return run for Kevin the Carrot and a debut for Marcus Radishford, voiced by Marcus Rashford, the Manchester United and England striker who caused such discomfort for the political classes over school meals. While ‘Fairytale of New York’ plays instrumentally in the background, there’s a direct message from Aldi: “For you to be happy you have to be kind”. 

Retailers go all out for Christmas

There’s a double whammy from M&S which deploys Percy Pig to promote its food business while actor Madisyn Ritland pays homage to Mary Poppins and ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ to showcase the clothing range. House of Fraser provides a multi-generational extravaganza while Boots has an epic which promotes the holiday as “the joy of getting out there and connecting with each other”. Sports Direct urges us to “go all out this Christmas” while JD Sports wants to welcome us to StandOut Street. For Debenhams, “being together is top of the list”. If that all seems somewhat distant from gloomier references to social distancing, Covid passports, and continuing injunctions about working from home, then perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised.

Eighty-five years ago, the poet TS Eliot wrote in Burnt Norton, the first of his Four Quartets that “human kind cannot bear very much reality". As well as being one of foremost poets in history, a businessman, and an editor, he would have made a truly great advertising copywriter.

“Last year’s words belong to last year’s language” he wrote, “and next year’s words await another voice.” 

Let us hope that next year’s words, in the context of Covid-19, are full of hope.