The Unexpected Guest

I wrote this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

When does Christmas start in your household? At what point is it socially acceptable to put up your tree and start playing Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ at full pelt?

With the regularity of a liturgical calendar, the Christmas adverts on TV arguably mark the beginning of the festive period for many of us. Nowadays, the Christmas ad is as much a part of the season as Boxing Day sales, broken toys, and left-over turkey.

Although it’s perhaps lost something of its lustre over the years, the John Lewis ad is still something of a benchmark. This year’s – ‘Unexpected Guest’ – sees our young hero befriending an alien who has crash-landed their ship in his local woods.

Overcoming his initial hesitancy, he introduces the visitor to the delights of the season: wearing novelty jumpers, eating mince pies, throwing snowballs, watching schmaltzy films. And all to a stripped-back cover of the 1984 classic, ‘Together in Electric Dreams’, the tale of friendship reaching a climax with the lyric ‘love never ends’.

The ad’s tagline – ‘For a Christmas as magical as your first’ – interprets their story for us, inviting us to reach back to something more basic, more lasting, more secure.

Where might that be found?

In part, it’s found in that which the ad itself captures – in befriending strangers and sharing traditions. Treating people as unexpected guests rather than unwelcome intrusions makes sense for those who are themselves part of the story in which God loves, Jesus serves, and the Spirit ministers – in self-giving tenderness towards us. Sentiment aside, how might we demonstrate over the festive season, and beyond, a generosity of heart and home?

But in a storyline which raises the possibility of an ‘unexpected guest’ coming to earth, and with a tagline which invites us to rediscover the magic of our ‘first’ Christmas, we might be encouraged to think of the very first Christmas of all.

Whatever we make of Christmas TV ads, the longings they reflect about relationship, togetherness, and harmony come together in the one who is truly able to offer them. It’s not that the sentiments are wrong. It’s that the solution to our sense of lack is located in the wrong place. The ads lay out a need we have that can be met only in the one who came that first Christmas to set in motion a divine rescue plan – Immanuel, God with us.

The Christmas Jesus

I contributed this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’, a weekly email service provided by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

When does Christmas start in your household? At what point is it reasonable to put up your tree and start playing Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ at full pelt?

With the regularity of a liturgical calendar, the Christmas adverts on TV arguably mark the beginning of the festive period for many. Nowadays, the Christmas ad is as much a part of the season as Boxing Day sales, broken toys, and left-over turkey.

Over the years, the John Lewis ad has become something of a sensation. This year’s is called ‘The Boy and the Piano’, and it features Elton John. We’re taken back in time to the moment his excited younger self ran down the stairs one Christmas morning to open his first piano. The moral of the tale, as the tagline tells us, is that ‘some gifts are more than just a gift’.

But, can a gift really make that sort of difference to our lives?

If the commercial hype feels too much, you might like to check out a two-and-a-half-minute Christmas film, made for £50, called ‘Love is a Gift’, which has been viewed millions of times.

It features a young man decorating his tree and counting down the days until Christmas, when he sits alone and listens to a cassette tape his Mum made for him before she died. We’re able to see that she recorded several tapes for him to listen to every year on Christmas day following her death. As a tear falls down the man’s face, it’s revealed that it’s the last tape his mother made. The film ends with the tagline: ‘Love is a gift that lasts forever. Merry Christmas.’

But, is love really a gift that lasts forever?

We need love, and we long for connection; good gifts really can make a difference in all sorts of ways. It’s not that the sentiments are wrong. It’s that the solution to our sense of lack is located in the wrong place. The Christmas ads are laying out a need we have that can be met only in the Christmas Jesus.

Can a gift really make a difference to our lives? Yes, but all the gifts in the world won’t make the difference we really need. Is love really a gift that lasts forever? Yes, when it comes from the one who lives forever. And he offers it to us today.

Never Knowingly Over-commercialised?

[I contributed this week’s ‘Connecting with Culture’ from the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity. I’m not entirely happy with the final product; it was difficult to limit myself to the 400 word count and say all I really wanted to say. Ah well... I’m also grateful for the help of my colleague, Neil Hudson, who suggested a few lines.]

Even if you’ve not yet seen the John Lewis Christmas TV advert, the chances are you’ve heard about it – through colleagues at work, Facebook friends, or just about any national newspaper. Within a few hours of being broadcast, it was trending on Twitter and has already had over 1,800,000 hits on YouTube – three times more in a week than its counterpart last Christmas managed in a year.

High production values, careful editing, and a few nods to classic movies combine to tell the story of a young boy counting down the days to Christmas only to ignore his own presents on Christmas morning for the joy of giving his parents their gift. Ending with the tagline ‘For gifts you can’t wait to give’, it has apparently reduced grown men and women to tears.

Others, however, have balked at the £6million price tag for the campaign, or condemned it as a clichéd, overly sentimental example of commercial manipulation, yet another victory for consumerism, and a cynical way of making money – only slightly offset by the policy of John Lewis to reward its workers with a share in the profits. Fans of Morrissey are divided on whether he has done the unthinkable in allowing the 1984 Smiths song, ‘Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want’ to be borrowed, covered in this case by Slow Moving Millie, using a hymn about unrequited love to sell goods to the middle-classes.

Even so, although the scenes contain John Lewis products, they are not centre-stage. In fact, the emphasis is not on the value of presents so much as the warmth of relationship. As such, the advert gestures towards what we hope to be true. We want generous-hearted children who know that ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive’ (Acts 20:35). Maybe the child embodies qualities we’d like for ourselves.

The joy of giving rather than receiving is somewhat hackneyed, but no less true for that, not least for those who are themselves part of the story in which God loves, Jesus serves, and the Spirit ministers – in self-giving tenderness towards us.

Here, perhaps, is a way of truly ‘connecting with culture’. But it’s also the challenge presented in culture to us. Mawkishness and sentiment aside, how might we demonstrate over the festive season and beyond a generosity of heart and home?

Links

View the John Lewis Christmas 2011 Advert on YouTube.

Read the press release from John Lewis on the Christmas 2011 TV advert.

Take a look at Stuart Jeffries, ‘What John Lewis and other stores’ TV ads tell us about Christmas 2011’, The Guardian (15 November, 2011).