On Thursday 2nd November, the brand new M&S Christmas Advert dropped onto our screens, showcasing a glamorous round of famous faces waving ‘goodbye’ to the festive traditions of old – booting Elf on a Shelf off a roof, burning paper hats, binning the Christmas cards and doing Christmas ‘their way’.
For more reasons than this, the advert faced a barrage of backlash – from religious groups, traditionalists, Christmas-lovers and media critics alike. Viewers took to Twitter to slam the advert for ‘ruining Christmas’, ‘removing the true meaning of Christmas’ and, sadly, ‘destroying the traditions of the season’. It was one of the biggest media scandals of the season so far.
Yet when fellow advertisers like Deliveroo, McDonald’s and John Lewis also decided to invite viewers to do Christmas their own way, it became apparent that an individualist Christmas was something desired by more than just the M&S marketing team.
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In my family, our traditions change, grow and shift every year. A child of divorce with different family groups across the country, no Christmas was ever the same for me, from the annual festive meal to the gift opening routine to the seasonal films we watched. No two Christmases were ever the same for me and I experienced the season entirely differently every single year – staying in a new bed on Christmas Eve, seeing different family members on the big day, hosting and not-hosting. A traditional Christmas has always seemed fairly fair-fetched in my home.
But the thing is – I love Christmas. I adore it. I’m the biggest Christmas-lover I know and so now I’m an adult and have a little more control over my holiday celebrations, I love the idea of an individualist Christmas. I love the idea of doing things differently to everyone else, because I’ve never know what ‘everyone else’ did. And I’m not alone.
Britain isn’t just a selection of copy-paste nuclear middle-class families anymore. It’s a multicultural nation of individuals, with unique feelings, preferences and ideas on the holiday. For a single parent family on the bread line, seeing glossy shiny baubles on a 9ft tree buried in satin-wrapped gifts for a glittering grinning family is little more than a sad reminder of their own situation. For individuals who live in small rented flats, temporary accommodation, who are spending Christmas in hospital or in a care home, the flashing adverts of garland-wrapped staircases and festive front-garden fawns are miserable and gloomy at best.
Advertising campaigns are designed to create aspirational goals for the viewers to consume. We’re meant to want what the actors in the adverts have, no matter how expensive, unrealistic, unachievable and unattainable. We’re meant to buy what they show us, live how they tell us to and make meaningful magic family memories every single December. And when we can’t do that, we feel like we’ve failed. Like we’ve let ourselves and our families down.
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This is why the new era of realistic and individualist advertising is so important in 2023. This year has been hard. With a cost of living crisis, two international wars, a new monarch on the throne, heatwaves, floods, a muddled Government and strikes across the country, the idea of a ‘traditional Christmas’ is far from the priority right now.
So why not encourage people to do what they want? Why not let families host Christmas in their own way, in the way that makes them happy? Let people enjoy the holidays exactly how they want to, without the pressure of picture perfect advertising reprimanding them at every step.
Across social media, the trend of a Little Women Christmas has been spreading since October, with people opting for small, handmade gifts and ornaments over expensive plastic toys and presents. Potluck Christmases are on the up, staying in on New Years Eve is more popular that going out and the traditional turkey is no long the ‘must-have’ festive food essential.
The world is changing and Britain is changing too. Holding onto traditions should be an optional activity, rather than an enforced one and if the true meaning of Christmas is about love, respect and giving, there’s no better way to show it than through free will and independence. Give your kids pigs in blankets for breakfast, turn the Elf on the Shelf into a garden gnome and pull party poppers out of crackers. Take the pressure off, and do what works for you this Christmas. You deserve to have some fun.
And you know what, if it doesn’t work, there’s always next Christmas.
