Over the past 18 years, the launch of the John Lewis Christmas advert has established itself as a key moment in the UK’s festive calendar, noted Ed Davies in the Financial Times. These ads are, of course, designed as miniature tearjerkers to create a warm, fuzzy feeling towards Britain’s favourite department store. But for many fathers of teenage boys (and some mothers too), this year’s advert has hit especially hard.
### Shameless Tearjerker
Set in a middle-class home, the advert tells the story of a man who finds, under the Christmas tree, a last unopened gift from his silent, headphone-wearing son. Inside is a vinyl copy of Alison Limerick’s 1990 club hit “Where Love Lives,” which transports dad back to a 1990s rave, according to The Guardian.
The pace then shifts as dad, now alone in a dark space, sees his son as a toddler and a baby. The scene returns to their home for a warm hug, closing with the tagline: “If you can’t find the words, find the gift.”
Yes, it’s a shameless tearjerker—but it also taps into an urgent national conversation about the crisis in boyhood, a discussion sparked in part by the TV drama *Adolescence*.
### No One Wants to See Dad Gurning
The masculinity crisis is not exactly a festive theme, as Jan Moir pointed out in the Daily Mail. And overall, the advert is strangely unsettling, wrote Sim.
“When I went to acid house raves, the very last thing I’d have wanted to see looming out of the darkness is any kind of relation, from the present or the future,” Sim explained. Furthermore, there is the unspoken association with recreational drugs. For anyone who was part of that scene, “Where Love Lives” evokes memories of being “absolutely wasted on E” during nights filled with woozy, loved-up hedonism—and of the agonising comedowns that followed.
This is not the usual touching family fare. Honestly, no one wants to see dad gurning in this context. It’s decidedly un-Christmassy.
https://theweek.com/culture-life/tv-radio/the-john-lewis-ad-touching-or-just-weird
