I’m one of those people who thinks he doesn’t really enjoy all the secular, cheesy, mass-produced holiday frivolity. I’m a serious person, after all, right? A priest. I’m focused on Advent, and the second coming, and penitence, not fake snow.
In that spirit, I watched maybe three minutes of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade this year. That’s about three minutes more than I have watched in the last five years.
The “unofficial start of the holiday season” is a tribute to American capitalism and its attempted theft of Christmas. As I watched the parade (full of various subtle and not-so-subtle advertisements) wind by the screen, I again found myself wondering what everyone else watching thought. Does everyone else approach this spectacle with such a critical eye? Does everyone else think it’s fake? Does anyone really buy this? Why are other people watching?
My three minutes of viewership included the Macy’s balloons, and, with all those questions on my mind, I was yet again floored by what I saw. For a few decades now, the Macy’s holiday marketing slogan has been “Believe.”
Believe.
To be clear, this isn’t some abstract belief. And it’s not at all clear what one is to believe in. I mean, the options are pretty wide. It’s often printed on stars, so we believe in stars? Or consumerism? Or the color red? Or? (Macy’s tells us the background of the campaign can be found in an 8-year-old girl’s 1897 letter to the editor of the New York Sun when she asked if Santa Claus was real. The editor explained why she should believe: “He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist.”
Believe. Not joy or hope or love or some other virtue. But a verb. In the vocative, no less. Macy’s commands: Believe.
Being so commanded to Believe, I started to pay attention a bit more. Christmas advertisements (unlike, say, Super Bowl ads) are gut-wrenching in their emotional punch.
This year, we’ve got Chevrolet with a long-form ad about a granddaughter engaging her memory-challenged grandmother on Christmas Day. It’s a moving five minutes that’s giving hope to a painful situation common to a ton of American families this time of year. But before we say it’s just about feeling good, here’s the title for this ad set to air as we remember the Nativity of Jesus: “A Holiday to Remember.”
Apple’s sales hook this year? Kindness and forgiveness.
And then there is Kroger’s ad. In this 75 seconds, we see a childless couple first welcome an international exchange student into their home. To address her homesickness, they make her some pozole (with ingredients purchased from Kroger). This repeats for years, student after student. And then the aged couple find themselves back where they started: childless and alone at Christmas. Until the knock the door, when all their students reunite, bringing their various cuisines for a Christmas feast. The tag line? “Food connects us all.” It’s far from a complete eucharistic theology, but I’ve heard (a lot) worse.
Just for the sake of time and space, I’m keeping this reflection only to this year’s television ads. That limit keeps me from having to wade into when the Christian blogosphere used many, many words to comment on Starbucks’ 2010 Holiday slogan: Take Comfort in Rituals.
So what’s going on here? Believe. Remember. Forgive. Food as more than just a consumable. How do committedly secular brands and their advertising creatives seem to keep stumbling into Christian-adjacent concepts and ideas?
Perhaps there’s a natural law argument here. There is only one true macro story in the universe, so maybe these advertisers know — even if they don’t have all the particulars. Or maybe it’s some double fake of trying to sound Christian while objecting to it all at the same time?
Whatever the reason, I’m at least a little bit curious what it means for the Church if this is what all the best ad creators in the world think people are longing for things so essential to the Christian life. What sells iPhones and groceries and trucks and sweaters at Christmas? Apparently, the good stuff is the best bet.
Maybe it’s why I don’t hate the cheesy popular Christmas as much as I thought. But also, perhaps as we converse with those who know not the Lord Jesus, we ought to copy these ideas that apparently resonate with our compatriots. In doing so, rather than copy, we’d repatriate them to their first home.
Very nice. Thanks. (And best wishes for a Good Advent, followed by a Merry Christmas.)
Some excellent reflections, Thomas. And I’ll surely use “repatriation” as you named it one way or another. And, yes, that Chevy ad made me cry real tears.