Did the John Lewis ad make you cry or are you dead inside? “Messed me up”, “Hefty sobbing”, “Proper tears” were among the comments on this year’s gentle, understated story of a man preparing for his foster daughter’s arrival by learning to skateboard.
It’s lovely (and John Lewis supports an employment programme for care leavers, so it’s not empty emotional manipulation). But this tradition of retailers setting a relatable story to slowed-down pop to punch us in the kidneys with manufactured feeling is weird. I understand it from their perspective – they’re not-so-subtly selling the warm, fuzzy feeling that they get us. But with so much real sadness around, why has this ersatz emotion become a seasonal event? Are we, as a nation, OK?
We’re not OK, obviously. Christmas is an over-spiced soup of emotional overwhelm at the best of times and oof, these are not the best of times. The weather outside isn’t exactly frightful (global heating), but shop windows full of baubles and glitter give me a genuine chill when, for many, Christmas will be more like this year’s desperately sad Shelter ad, in which a little boy puts on a brave face for his mum in grim temporary accommodation. Couldn’t we calm Christmas expectations down this year? I want a Communist Yule where we pool our resources, everyone gets a tangerine and we can overthrow the government as a treat (maybe we could wrap the tangerines in scraps of looted Lulu Lytle gold wallpaper – just spitballing here).
But we must get something from the ads, and specifically “the shedding of tears from the lacrimal apparatus, in the absence of any irritation of the eyes”, as one research paper puts it, deliciously. Crying is under-researched, partly because collecting tears is tricky. Do crying researchers use sad movies and videos of rescue dogs finding their forever homes like fertility clinics use porn to harvest samples? (They do, I checked.)
Despite the challenges, we know a bit about crying. For a start, surprisingly, despite a widespread, cross-cultural belief in the power of a “good cry”, there isn’t strong evidence that it is cathartic. One study found “baseline mood” improved 90 minutes after crying at a sad film, but when 97 women kept daily diaries, only 30% reported improved mood after a crying jag.
We cry, the theory goes, to communicate. “Emotional” tears have more protein than the irritant kind, which slows their trickle down your cheeks, increasing the chances of your vulnerability being seen. Sitting alone, subjecting myself to compilations of “the most tearjerking Christmas ads of all time”, I wonder what these particular tears are made of – eggnog protein? Glitter and guilt?
My morning has been full of polystyrene dry-snow and chunky knitwear, twinkling lights and soundtracks on the cusp of poignant and schmaltz – gentle piano, spare guitar, fluting vocals. I’m a reluctant crier and hate the idea of retailers using my tears to sell me an air fryer. So did I cry? Even with no one watching, you bet I did – from a slight throat constriction and blink through bilateral tears and even one audible sob. But I also tried to work out what Christmas ads are telling us.
They tell us that families are bloody hard work, for a start, especially if they feature an older man. German supermarket chain Edeka’s offerings include the alleged “saddest ad ever”, in which a father literally pretends to be dead to get his children to visit. That’s not poignant, it’s monstrous. And Christmas 2020 featured a Scrooge-like figure being an absolute git to his Turkish neighbours until he succumbs to Covid and they make him Christmas dinner. More fundamentally, they tell us that we are seen, known, and cared for. John Lewis 2015 – the little girl gifting the lonely old man in the moon a telescope – is a classic. Amazon’s 2021 offering, with a woman surprising her anxious young neighbour with a bird feeder, wrung me out like a dishcloth (damn you, Jeff). Apple’s 2019 advert, in which a grieving older gent’s grumpy carapace is broken open by his annoying granddaughters’ gift of Apple-curated memories, is a sniper-accurate tear-seeking missile.
Above all, they tell us things can be fixed. Nothing is irretrievably broken – reconciliation can always be wrung from estrangement and a white flag over the top of a trench, whether real (Sainsbury’s 2014) or metaphorical, is the greatest seasonal gift. No wonder Christmas ads are a key rite in our secular liturgical calendar, bigger than Starbucks red cups or a PA from whichever soap star is turning on the lights near you – a redemption narrative is impossible to resist. The cathartic effects of crying may be unproven, but I’m pretty sure that’s what the ads offer – an emotional escape valve and a safe sentimental space for all the unmanageable feelings we have about the world and our place in it. We’re scared, we’re scarred and we’re sad – perhaps we need a minute and a half, regularly repeated, where it’s OK to cry.
Follow Emma on Twitter @belgianwaffling
