The bear and the hare divide opinion

Does the John Lewis Christmas advert warm your heart or just leave you cold?

Its soundtrack stormed the charts, its video had as many million online views as the seven it cost to make, and it has divided public opinion.

Now our writers Chae Strathie and Alison Kirker join the John Lewis Christmas ad debate.

Chae

I walk into my living room and the first thing I see is my wife’s pale face, her cheeks wet with tears. I feel my stomach lurch and my throat tighten. I grip the door frame, preparing for awful news.

“W-what’s happened?” I stammer in a hoarse whisper.

My wife turns and stares out the window into the cold darkness of the night. Finally she speaks, her voice cracking: “The . . . the . . . hare . . .”

“The hairy what?”

“The . . . hare. The hare and the bear. It was . . .” She releases a shuddering sigh and then it all comes out in a rush of emotion. “The-bear-had-never-seen-Christmas-because-it-was-asleep-and-the-hare-was-sad-so-it-bought-him-an-alarm-clock-and-the-bear-saw-the-Christmas-tree-and-everyone-was-happy-oh-my-god-it-was-sooooo-lovely-waaaaaa-aaggghhh!”

“Eh?”

“It was the John Lewis ad,” she snuffles. “You HAVE to see it!”

That was last week, and after recovering from the trauma of that evening, I eventually did see the swanky store’s much anticipated Christmas commercial.

Perhaps it’s just a side-effect of getting older, but my icy heart remained un-melted by the animated animal-based shenanigans.

The soundtrack, a predictably syrupy reworking of a Keane song, immediately switched my stomach settings to “puke”, and the whole thing just seemed too contrived and cynical.

I know the whole point of an ad is to make you buy stuff, but when it’s elevated to the heights of fluffy TV “event” rather than just the marketing tool it is, it irritates rather than moves me. There’s a sly coldness beneath all that warmth.

The stylistic mixture of classic Disney cartoons and Watership Down (which I can barely even type without bawling uncontrollably) is clearly designed to violently wrench at the heart strings of people who saw those movies decades ago. But it simply didn’t touch me.

It just left me demanding answers to several important questions. Where do woodland animals get the money to shop at John Lewis when I can’t afford to and I have a job? Why didn’t the bear go MENTAL at being woken from hibernation to go and look at a tree? Couldn’t the hare have just prodded the bear awake and then given him a more interesting present than a poxy alarm clock?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=XqWig2WARb0

Alison

Let’s start with a message to all you cynical people with a heart of stone.

If you don’t like the John Lewis Christmas advert, or any of the other festive telly commercials, turn over. Make a cup of tea. Bake a Christmas cake.

Just do us all a favour and stop droning on that it really is rubbish. That it’s too early for Christmas ads. That it’s not even December.

Who cares, Scrooge?

Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat. And John Lewis is getting rich.

Their bear and hare Christmas combo is a fantastic festive tear-jerker. Hare is sad because bear’s never seen Christmas, too busy hibernating, the big lazy lump.

So hare buys him an alarm clock. And I think we all know it’s not from Argos. Bear is a changed, em, bear.

Come on. It wraps up everything Christmas is about in a neat two minutes 10 seconds. It makes me cry, even now.

And I hope whoever created it finds an extra special present under the tree in just over a month. A slice of the £7 million it cost to make, wrapped up in a red ribbon.

Six million people can’t be wrong. That’s how many have viewed it on YouTube three million before it was even broadcast on TV.

And you know when an ad

creates more chat than the programme it’s shown during (naming no names but Simon Cowell was heard wailing from here) that it’s struck a Christmassy chord.

And look. We’re not dafties. For all you Christmas killjoys pointing out these ads are just designed to sell something, well hold the front page!

We never realised that. Except we did. Who cares?

Every time I see the Christmas Coke ad that’s trotted out the minute Hallowe’en’s over, I get a wee flurry of festive cheer.

And what’s so wrong with that?

Times are tough. People have lots to worry about. And actual telly programmes are a bit rubbish just now. So if the ads cheer me, and millions like me, up, then leave us alone to enjoy them and have a good cry.