The weird thing about tradition is that it has a tendency to long outlive its usefulness. Bonfire Night, once a way for the government to remind the public of its capacity to murder revolutionaries, has simply become an excuse to eat a jacket potato in a field. Church bells still ring on Sunday mornings, when it would be quicker and way more considerate to ping the congregation on WhatsApp. And the John Lewis Christmas advert is somehow still a thing.
True, it wasn’t so long ago that the John Lewis Christmas advert was a cultural institution; a teargas grenade lobbed into the television schedules to make viewers cry in the middle of The Cube. But now it is the year 2025, and things have changed. The John Lewis advert is a linear television commercial about a department store, even though the only way to describe either of those two things to a child is as a YouTube with no search function and an Amazon you actually have to walk to.
Nevertheless, this year’s John Lewis Christmas advert has landed – 10 days earlier than last year – and it is absolutely buisness as usual. A boy buys his dad a vinyl copy of the house banger Where Love Lives by Alison Limerick. The record causes the dad to be transported to a dancefloor, where his son greets him as a baby, a toddler, and finally as an adolescent. And then, through the sheer power of John Lewis, the song slows down into a sludgy plink-plonk cover version of itself.
Simply put, this is the mashup between Love Actually and Aftersun nobody knew they needed.in the former,you will remember that Alan Rickman gifted his wife Emma Thompson a Joni Mitchell CD,an act that moved her to tears. In the latter, you will remember that a father and his daughter dance euphorically to Under Pressure.
It’s here. The John Lewis Christmas advert. And this year, it’s… surprisingly affecting.It features a young boy and his dad, building a snow fort, and a lot of longing looks. It’s set to a cover of a classic song, and it’s all vrey beautifully shot.
But what’s really engaging is the references. The snow fort feels very Aftersun, doesn’t it? And the dad’s quiet sadness? Very Alan Rickman in Love Actually.It’s a clever move.
Oh, sure, you could read more into those references if you wanted. You could suggest that the scene in Aftersun represented the very last moment father and daughter spent together before he abandons her forever, causing her a lifetime of unsolvable trauma. And maybe you’d want to point out that Emma Thompson was actually crying because the CD was confirmation that Alan Rickman was cheating on her and their marriage was over. But shut up, it’s Christmas.
Either way, what’s clever about the advert is that fathers and sons will each take something different from it. The advert doesn’t tell you *what* to feel; it just gives you the tools to feel something. And that’s pretty powerful.