Copyright standard
Is the Lidl Christmas advert a dire commentary on the state of modern day Britain, or a Christmas ad? At points, it’s quite hard to tell — but don’t worry. By the end, my initial confusion had been replaced by apathy. Why? Pick your reason. For one, the whole thing is filmed in a rather depressing greyscale filter, which sucks all the colour out and replaces it with washed-out sepia (a tick in the dire commentary box). For another, there’s no magic or wonder here at all. Instead, we begin with watching men wearing naff-looking star-shaped headdresses on the bus into work, while a little girl watches them through her car window and tells us via voiceover why she loves Christmas so much. Oddly, the reason is not presents, or indeed eating so much chocolate you feel sick (both mainstays of my festive fantasies when I was a kid). Instead, it’s the miserably worthy ideal of spending more time with family and being selfless, accompanied by footage of her shopping at Lidl and hanging out with her gran. “It’s not all me, me, me. It’s more us,” she explains as the Beach Boys’ Wouldn’t It Be Nice plays in the background. “Time isn’t money anymore, it’s just… time.” If that isn’t a not-very-veiled critique of our capitalist culture, then I’m a Christmas pudding. She then follows it up with the rather ham-fisted, “Instead of thinking of what we want, we wonder what someone else might like.” Translation: kids, money might be tight this festive season, so don’t complain about not getting all the nice things that you want. Instead, sit down with your family for a good old Lidl roast turkey (no trimmings to be seen) and consider donating your pocket money to the supermarket’s Toy Bank scheme, which gives presents to children who might not ordinarily get them. Last year, that numbered 100,000: a sobering statistic for a supposedly first world country. It’s a worthy cause. It’s just all a bit… dull. Surely an injection of festive sparkle would make the message hit home a little harder? As it is, it’s hard to prevent the eyes from glazing over.
