On X (formerly known as Twitter), as ever, opinion was divided. “Fully grown men crying about the John Lewis Christmas ad only featuring women is better than any gift that money could buy,” wrote one woman. “Boring, I don’t get it,” wrote a male user. “Apparently, it’s supposed to be a tear-jerker.”
And therein lies the rub. Whilst we can all get behind the poignancy of a lonely old man or a trampolining dog, it appears that not all of us can relate to the poignancy of running round the shops for 15 minutes until closing time, sweating profusely in faux leather trousers and a chunky knit – though said sweats could equally have been prompted by the maelstrom of conflicting demands churning round our heads as we dash down an escalator looking for the perfect gift. Or 32 of them, actually, once we count our parents, partner, siblings, godchildren, nieces, nephews and friends.
Why is the John Lewis ad not relatable? Answer: it is. But only if you’ve ever been the person tasked with not merely celebrating Christmas, but producing it. In this, you don’t have to be a woman – but it helps. Scratch the surface of most nuclear families, and it’s women who buy the bulk of the Christmas presents, often for their partner’s families as well as their own. No, not all women. But many women.
Some of these women are angry about the extent and burden of this unpaid labour, but most of them are sanguine. They love producing Christmas, and wouldn’t have it any other way. Were their male partner ever to offer up more help, they might even reject it. They’d also likely criticise him for failing to do “the thing” as well as they’d have done “the thing”.
None of these complex emotions existed for me in 1997, when all I needed from a partner was decent taste in trainers and a GSOH (good sense of humour). To hear a song I loved from simpler times used as a soundtrack to more complex ones hit me like a ten-foot Norwegian fir. Maybe I had to become a middle-aged woman to realise that Richard Ashcroft had always written lyrics like a middle-aged woman. “My friend and me / looking through her red box of memories / Faded I’m sure / but love seems to stick in her veins, you know”. What 26-year-old bloke from Wigan has any business in writing those?
