Holidays are coming

Dear Mum,

Although it may seem like a past occurrence, a faded memory from mid-October, Christmas dawns in just three hours...

In principle.

Kate and I are returning home on Saturday to partake in the decking of halls, the stirring of mincemeat and the traditional family visit to Rudyard Kipling’s Christmas homestead of Bateman’s.

Christmas truly begins, however, when the glinting red lorries and nineties hairstyles grace our TV screens to the accompaniment of ‘Holidaysare Coming.’ Coco-Cola’s website confirms that Christmas this year therefore began on 12^th November.

This advert may be some fifteen years old but it is timeless.

An alternative Coca-Cola advert was aired a year or so ago. This included a strangely illuminated girl presenting a bottle of Coke to the iconic Santa Claus, clad in the Coca-Cola red, every Christmas throughout her life.

You may remember this. It was traumatising.

Due partly to the overt cheesiness, plus the computer graphics giving the characters an eerie glow, like wax works with frantic smiles permanently stretched across their shiny faces.

Fortunately, these creatures were once more replaced with the wholesome festivity of snowy vegetation, cheering communities and the mystical red lorry.

Joy to the world, indeed!

Aside from the kingly Coca-Cola advert, the commercials currently being aired fall into two categories; the moderate and the drivel.

The Marks and Spencer advert, in my opinion, is drivel.

If you don’t watch X-Factor, which I don’t and am assuming a vast proportion of M&S shoppers similarly don’t, the musical interludes offered by the show’s contestants will be of little meaning. Their trills do no entice me to shop at M&S.

I was only made aware of whom this motley crew were when reading about Frankie Cocozza’s expulsion from the competition and Christmas single due to drug abuse.

Certainly, intoxication is a huge part of Christmas festivities. Like you, Mum, and, indeed, our whole family, I love a festive tipple. But drug and alcohol misuse is not the finest form of advertisement, particularly during the season of goodwill.

What happened to the James Bond advert? The one with Shirley Bassey? Or even the one with Philip Glenister perving on the lingerie model?

Take a leaf out of Coca-Cola’s book, M&S, bring back the classics!

John Lewis’ advert is preferable – I’d say it is a moderate advert.

John’s aim is clearly to make viewers cry, after the ‘She’s always a woman’ commercial. Similar to the Coca-Cola advert it tracked a girl’s life in thirty seconds. The fundamental difference, however, was it made viewers bawl at the fragility of human life rather than scream with fear at the spine-chilling Barbie figure.

I read a comment article online, which said anyone who wasn’t moved to tears by John Lewis’ impatient child protagonist caged a heart of flint.

I accepted this challenge. I was determined I would remain composed and unmoved.

But the minute the little boy skipped past his bulging stocking of treats and into his puzzled parents’ bedroom I could feed my throat tighten.

Which is ridiculous. What kind of a person gets affected by or emotionally involved in an advert...?

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