An old man wakes before dawn, looks at a photograph of a couple with a young daughter, walks to the shed behind his house, and strains to lift a kettlebell he stored there long ago. Roused daily by his alarm clock, he returns again and again to the shed, exercising with the kettlebell while looking at a picture for inspiration. A neighbor, concerned by his unusual behavior, phones the man’s daughter, who arrives but receives no explanation for his kettlebell workout.
On Christmas, the old man, now nattily dressed, arrives at his daughter’s house. When his granddaughter appears, he presents her with a package in which she finds a gold star tree topper. While his daughter watches with tears in her eyes, the man lifts his granddaughter high in the air to place the star atop the Christmas tree.
The inspiration of her picture and his work with the kettlebell have paid off.
This story may sound like a “Chicken Soup for the Soul” article, but it’s a 2020 advertisement titled “Take Care of Yourself.” Released by Dutch pharmaceutical company Doc Morris and considered by many the best Christmas ad of that year, it touched the hearts and tear glands of millions of viewers. The concept extended beyond the physical care of the body to speak of love and sacrifice.
For over 60 years, Christmas commercials have delivered meaningful messages to viewers. Before visiting a few of these, a word of caution: You might want to have a box of tissues handy.
Memories
In Chevrolet’s award-winning “A Time to Remember,” we meet another grandparent, a woman locked deep inside herself with dementia. As her family gathers for Christmas and she sits staring into space, a young adult granddaughter kneels before her and says, “Let’s make today a good day.”She leads her grandmother outside, strips away the tarp covering a classic Chevy Suburban, and cheers when the engine starts. As they revisit the places that once meant so much to the elderly woman—her high school, the drive-in movie lot where she and her husband first kissed—her grandmother slowly enters the present and arrives home to a family filled with her joy at her presence. “You always were the clever one,” she tells her granddaughter.
“Good days and bad,” the old woman’s husband says at one point of his wife. “But the love is always there.”
Hafod Hardware in Wales offers a switch in the age game with “Be a Kid This Christmas.” The commercial opens with a boy, maybe five or six years old, waking and then setting off down the street to Hafod’s, where he dons an apron and performs adult tasks—sweeping, bookkeeping, chatting with customers, and wrapping gifts. At the very end of the ad, he closes up shop, bends to pick up a large Christmas fir leaning against the building, and rises in the next frame as a man in his 30s. “Be a kid this Christmas” reads the tag as he sets off down the street.
Here we see the mingling of childhood Christmas memories with the duties of adulthood. It’s a sweet, whimsical piece intended to fire up memories of our younger days and find the child within when Christmas arrives.
Holidays Past
The gift of Christmas often comes wrapped and ribboned in nostalgia. Many of us keep ornaments that adorned the trees of our childhood, prepare special holiday dishes handed down by our grandmothers, and sing along with the songs and carols we learned long ago.If you’re older and want a taste of childhood nostalgia this year, or if you want a peek at Christmas as enjoyed by your grandparents when they were children, visit “Christmas Boomers Holiday Commercials 1960s” on YouTube. In the first ad, RCA Victor offers the latest in technology: a “living color” television that can be turned on with a remote, a TV that swivels, and the newest Victrola phonograph. Following up is a commercial touting Instant Maxwell House Coffee, centered on a turn-of-the-century theme featuring trains, a Tin Lizzie, and Christmas at home, all done with still-life dolls. Other ads promote goods like General Electric appliances and Chanel perfume.
The technology behind these commercials seems primitive to us today, but this just adds to their sense of innocence.
Laughing at Ourselves
In an ad for Audi on YouTube’s “10 Best Christmas Commercials of All Time,” two men enter a jam-packed parking garage at the height of the shopping season and race each other in their search for a spot. After all the tire-screeching and snarling, they end up in the store in one final race with their shopping carts when they spot the toy giraffe both are looking for. The ad ends with the words, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” which should bring a smile of recognition.Audi’s message: We have great cars, but don’t get carried away by the frenzy of the season.
A Candy Bar for Christmas
Christmas commercials often come with family gatherings, various manifestations of Santa, trees glowing with lights and ornaments, and dinner tables groaning with food.One production, however, which featured none of these traditional backdrops, was one of the most striking and successful holiday ads ever made.
In 2014, the UK grocery store chain Sainsbury’s created “1914,” a holiday ad based on an event that had occurred exactly 100 years earlier, the World War I informal Christmas truce. A British soldier, Jim Knight, receives a photo from his fiancé along with a bar of Sainsbury chocolate. From their trenches the Germans and the English serenade each other with “Silent Night.” Inspired, the next morning Knight climbs the ladder out of the trench, hands held high, risking certain death. A German who orders his men not to fire does the same, and the pair meet in the middle of no-man’s land, followed by their comrades.
Soon the men are exchanging names and small gifts and playing soccer. When guns in the distance begin firing again, both sides go to their respective trenches. Meanwhile, Jim has slipped his special bar of chocolate into Otto’s pocket.
“Christmas is for sharing,” runs the end tag. It’s an effective and beautiful ending, but for those who know the history of that war—the millions of casualties, the repercussions that even today plague our world—the ad can bring a shower of tears.
The Greatest of Our Gifts
Sharing, helping those who can’t help themselves, loving our friends and family, and holding fast to tradition—these are the true gems that make the holidays a treasure.And unlike all those presents we buy for one another, spending these riches won’t break your bank account. They were made for spending.
In the clever and humorous “M&S TV Ad 2017,” Paddington Bear mistakes a burglar for Santa Claus and leads the baffled thief through the neighborhood, delivering all the presents he had swiped. By the end of these adventures, the thief has repented. The ad should appeal to adults and children alike and concludes, “This Christmas, let’s spend it well.”
Exactly.
Merry Christmas, all.
