Next to the Super Bowl, the Christmas holiday season produces some of the most memorable commercials. Some are remembered for the wrong reasons. Folgers tried to duplicate the tone of “Peter Comes Homes From Christmas” which premiered 40 years ago in 1985 with an updated version. The original featured a college-aged young man arriving at his childhood home on Christmas morning and being met by a much younger girl assumed to be his daughter.
It’s sweet and touching. It shows what most people want for the holidays where everyone is able to make it home despite the winter storm that might have kept Peter away. In 2009, another commercial featuring a brother and sister meeting on Christmas morning aired. But the sister was older, more closer in age to the brother. (Rumor has it the actress was a girlfriend of one of the ad producers at the time.) And the way the two siblings looked at each other in the kitchen led some to believe the parents coming in stopped them from making out.
And then there’s the Hershey drops playing “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” as if they were bells ringing is iconic and still gets airplay decades after it aired. It turns 35 this year.
But 10 years ago, the Internet gave us a commercial many, many people probably would’ve never seen. No one outside of Germany or Europe has probably ever heard of Edeka, one of the largest supermarket chains in continent.
Yet, a commercial went around 10 years ago that has me boggled someone crazy enough had the audacity to even suggest it. I’d like to think it was an issue in which someone was hoping to be fired or intended as a sick joke. However, it backfired.
It features an older man lonely and sad because all his grown kids are successful and live all over the world. I think one lives in Japan or the Southeast Asian area. They’re not going to be able to make it for Christmas. Ok, since it looks like he lives in a nice home and is a widower, someone might suggest he go visit one of his kids since he’s going to be all alone with his furbaby.
Or he takes a trip somewhere else. Surely, he has some friends or whatever that he can talk to or hang out with.
No. He fakes his own death.
This is like burning your house down because you don’t want to dust and vacuum.
So, his children and their families make the journey (at Christmastime nonetheless) prepared to say their final goodbyes. But he’s alive and he just wanted them all to come together for the holidays.
Yes, what the actual fuck?!
And the funniest part is everyone is like “Oh, dad, you shouldn’t have.”
I know a lot of people who would’ve gone through the roof if their parents pulled this. There would’ve been a funeral anyway because I’m pretty sure someone would’ve had a stroke or heart attack from how angry they would get. This is very manipulative and narcissistic.
Even Peggy Hill would never have pulled this type of egomania. This reminds me of stories I’ve heard about people who won athletic scholarships to top colleges but their parents refused because they didn’t want to travel to games. This type of fucked-up behavior does happen among a lot of people, but I don’t think a single person would go as far as to fake their own death to get people to visit.
What’s even more fucked up is how so many people are talking about how sad it is and how they lost their loved ones and blah, blah, blah.
I lost my own mother shortly after Christmas last year. In 2014, I know a woman who lost her first born son a few days after Christmas. Even worse, the birthday of her youngest son was a few days ago. He also has died. So, this is a very bad time of year for her.
And it’s a very bad time for a lot of people who are celebrating their first Christmas after the lost of a loved one. How the hell did anyone think this would be a great, sentimental commercial for the holidays? Maybe things are different in Germany and Europe in general. But at least empathy is still universal.
Or it should be.
I know it’s just a commercial but think of how difficult it would’ve been for those people to get time off work and spend all the money to travel with children at the last minute.
But I think it exhibits a bigger problem in this world. Boomers may be mostly a North American thing but I think it also applies to European people. As I’ve written in previous posts, the reason people hate the Christmas holidays so much is they few it as a chore instead of a time of celebration.
And what is it anyway? You eat a meal surrounded by people you haven’t seen in months. You chat for a little bit. If you’re lucky, you’re able to get out of there before someone breaks out the home videos or decides they want to play games. Trust me. No one wants to see your family members sing or dance at Christmas unless they’re drunk as shit.
People have their own ways to celebrate (or not celebrate) the holidays. We shouldn’t force it on people. And as people get older, fall in love, and start families of their own, we need to respect those boundaries.
Yes, I said the B-word.
You can’t keep doing the same thing you did at 8 that you’re doing at 18 or 28. That’s why Christmas With the Kranks is just a nauseating movie. There’s going to be different things happen whether you’ve planned them or not.
On Christmas Day 1999, we were going to celebrate my grandmother’s 80 birthday as it was near Christmas. She was in ICU from a blood hemorrhage. She lived another eight years, but she almost waited too late to contact anyone. One Christmas back in 1991 I think, my brother had bronchitis really bad.
In 2009, a huge winter storm had a lot of us snowbound for Christmas so we couldn’t do a family get-together until the next month. In 2003, we thought one of our cats was going to pass away as she was very sick. On 2005, I had to take my ex to the ER because she was having complications from a knee surgery a few days earlier.
And of course, during 2020, we all had to meet via Zoom because of Covid. Thankfully, no one in my family passed away from Covid. But I felt sorry for all those that did only to hear people bitch and gripe they couldn’t do the same Christmas dinner they had done every year since.
So, for all of you with the “This could be their last Christmas” mantra, knock it off. I didn’t know it was going to be my mother’s last Christmas last year and I didn’t know it was going to be my girlfriend’s last Christmas in 2021.
We’re never promised a tomorrow so the best thing to do is to live in the moments.
The funniest thing about my grandmother is she never did like going to family get-togethers for too long. And I’m the same myself.
I think some people misunderstand that “There’s no place like home for the holidays” doesn’t mean returning to your childhood home as a grown adult to relive some memories. Most of us don’t even those houses anymore. My brother and I sold ours earlier this year.
I think it means waking up on Christmas morning in your own bed in your own room and just choosing your own pace. There may not be a huge party, but you may not be that type of person. And I definitely don’t like spending hours cooking food to spend hours on a road to go somewhere I’m not going to be comfortable.
Maybe that’s why people like National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation so much. Clark Griswold wants to have a Norman Rockwell/Hallmark Christmas but you can’t force people to behave a certain way for your own enjoyment. Remember, it’s their Christmas too. So, everything keeps fucking up for the Griswolds as it should.
Clark watches the home videos of the holidays as a child but he only sees it through rose-collar glasses because he was young and didn’t see the world the way people do when they get older.
Worse is social media has turned it into something people want to achieve rather than enjoy. I don’t want to put on a suit and tie to eat a dinner in my own house. I don’t even want to dress up business casual. Wasn’t the whole idea behind Christmas that Jesus was born in a manger, a meek setting they turned into a temporary home?
I don’t mean to be more vulgar, but they were surrounded by a lot of livestock shit if Jesus was actually born in a manger. And I’m sure Mary and Joseph as well as the Three Wisemen didn’t smell too good either. I’m sure the frankincense was very well received.
Ironically, the more you try to build it up, the more sacrilegious the holiday gets.
Maybe put down the camera and just enjoy what happens (or doesn’t happen) during your Christmas celebrations.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 