Great. There’s no time to waste. Christmas is under six weeks away and we have 18 John Lewis Christmas adverts to review and rank:
18) Snapper: The Perfect Tree, 2023
Thanks John Lewis, now I’m crying over a monstrous Venus Fly Trap that’s been left out in the cold.
Snapper seems like an attempt to blend the humour of, say, Buster the Boxer (see below), with the standard John Lewis playbook (small child has inhuman friend to learn from or teach a lesson). It’s all a bit Little Shop of Horrors but with a dearth of camp and an avalanche of snapper-themed merch.
The poor carnivorous plant doesn’t even get a meal, ending up covered in frost and acting as a glorified gift un-wrapper. And the rando Italian tune (Festa, a new song, performed by Andrea Bocelli) doesn’t help. It’s a miss for me, I’m afraid.
17) Moz the Monster, 2017
I’m sorry, I have to speak my truth. I don’t like Moz, he creeps me out. He looks like he smells of mildewed towels.
As someone who cannot sleep in total darkness even as an adult, I dislike the idea of a snoring, farting, hideous monster under my bed. I’m glad he gets chased off in the end. Also, ANOTHER Beatles cover (Elbow doing sad Golden Slumbers), please, find another artist.
However, I am giving points out for scandal and Moz brewed up good one. Author Chris Riddell accused John Lewis of stealing the idea from his 1986 book Mr Underbed (featuring a giant blue monster with a big nose). The department store shot back that monsters-under-the-bed stories are standard fare. Riddell’s book sold out of stores.
Everyone loves controversy!
The first Christmas advert from John Lewis grew out of a wider campaign that saw objects stocked by the department store stacked and lit just so, to create human figures. This festive version featured grey-clad assistants working together to create the shape of a woman walking her dog in the snow.
This was before the tradition of a cover song was established, so the soundtrack was the Morning Serenade from Sergei Prokofiev’s ballet Romeo and Juliet.
It’s pretty cool and arty, but also a blatant rip-off of the work of YBAs Tim Webster and Sue Noble, who create shadow figures out of literal rubbish. That’s capitalism, baby.
15) Give a Little Love, 2020
Ah, the Pandemic Years. The 2020 John Lewis advert was very much of its time – think clapping for the NHS on your doorstep.
A circular tale of good deeds endlessly paid forward could have been blander than lockdown banana bread, but it’s saved by the fun switches between art and animations style. The effect is like a surrealist’s game of exquisite corpse.
This was the first John Lewis ad to eschew a protagonist and to feature an original song – A Little Love by Celeste. Sweet enough, but too redolent of bad times to be a proper classic of the genre.
Enter the pop-song cover. A slowed down version of the Beatle’s From Me to You gets sung by a presumably cute child as various characters are matched with their perfect gift. Falling asleep at the table? Coffee machine for you. A dog with luscious fur? How about a groovy hair dryer.
It’s a fun, irreverent ad that ticks all the boxes. Although why was everything so shiny and grey in the Noughties?
Okay, so upon rewatching, the snowman is actually a lot less creepy than I remember. Children playing in the snow outside a picturesque cottage build a sweet snow couple, only for one to go missing.
Over hill, dale and motorway the snowman struggles to get to John Lewis to buy his beloved a nice set of red gloves, scarf and jaunty beret. Garbrielle Aplin (then just a 20-year-old Youtube star) croons a sorrowful version of Eighties classic The Power of Love (Frankie Goes to Hollywood).
I still think that if you put a horror movie soundtrack over it, the snowman’s jumpcut progress would be terrifying. But maybe I just still think about the 2007 Doctor Who episode about those weeping angels too much.
12) The Man on the Moon, 2015
Another John Lewis advert that walks the knife edge between horror and heartwarming. A little girl sweetly attempts to make contact with a lonely old man on the moon, succeeding on Christmas day by sending him a telescope via balloon.
There’s some double nostalgia re-watching an advert made 15 years ago. Is that an iPod touch? Remember hobo bags and those bizarre ribbon necklaces with beads that were somehow all the rage?
Cute kids open gifts clearly meant for adults, like coffee machines and grandpa slippers, before the twist reveals lookalike adults enjoying the same gifts, recapturing the Christmas joy of their youth. Taken By Trees provides the melancholy cover of Guns N’ Roses Sweet Child o’ Mine.
Extra points for providing the blueprint for all future John Lewis Crimbo ads to come.
10) Excitable Edgar, 2019
Hmm, he’s not as creepy as Moz but I’m still not Edgar’s biggest fan. Maybe CGI monsters in John Lewis ads just aren’t for me.
Still, his tale is sad enough. Poor little dragon can’t contain his festive excitement, causing him to snort flames that melt snowmen, destroy an ice-skating pond, and torch the entire town’s Christmas decorations.
Rather than grab the torch and pitchforks (it’s set in some hand-wavy, vaguely Germanic fairy tale medieval town) the residents just seem to accept this pyrotechnic hazard in their midst, allowing him to put his talents to use by lighting the Xmas pud. Bastille does a decent cover of Can’t Fight This Feeling by REO Speedwagon.
For scandal watchers, there were a grand total of THREE children’s books authors who accused John Lewis of pinching their dragon idea. “There are lots and lots of stories about dragons,” was their deadpan statement. Burn!
9) The Boy and the Piano, 2018
Celebrity cameo klaxon! It’s Elton John, playing Elton John and playing Your Song, setting off a time-travelling re-wind through his greatest music (and fashion) moments, performing to screaming crowds and on groovy private jets.
Eventually he lands back as a little boy receiving his first piano. It’s genuinely goosebump-giving on the re-watch, although Elton’s rose-tinted glasses are firmly on. We had to wait for Rocketman to come out the next year to document some of the less savoury sides to the pop megastar’s rise to fame.
8) The Gifting Hour, 2024
I may not have a sister, but this was still a heartwarming addition to the pantheon of John Lewis Christmas ads. A woman rushes into a John Lewis store to find a gift for her sister, entering a Narnia-like portal that propels her through doorways to all the past interactions with her beloved sibling.
Sadly, no cover though – just The Verve’s 1998 song Sonnet.
It does break the fourth wall in that it is, for the first time, set inside a John Lewis store, where previous adverts merely hinted that one such place might exist. It’s a lot of product placement, but it’s also a pretty accurate representation of the love and panic that goes into finding the ideal gift.
7) An Unexpected Guest, 2021
Oh, this one riled some real weirdos up. On the surface it’s a down-the-line John Lewis number. A sweet boy protagonist meets a cute alien that crash landed in the woods. He teaches her the meaning of Christmas (fairy lights) while she repairs her craft. They share a chaste cheek kiss before she leaves Earth. Lola Young covers Together in Electric Dreams.
It was clearly designed to plug into the Stranger Themes hype. But the online gammon brigade got very upset that the advert featured an inter-galactic romance between a 14-year-old Black boy and an alien. John Lewis had to release a statement in support of the child actor, who was receiving racist abuse.
6) Monty the Penguin, 2014
I want to take the moral high ground her and suggest this was a blatant attempt to shill a lot of soft toy penguins to soppy parents, but Monty the Penguin is so cute I can’t resist.
There’s a real Calvin and Hobbes energy to the story of a young boy who realises his imaginary penguin friend needs a mate, as Tom Odell covers John Lennon’s Real Love. As a former child that had a whole menagerie of stuffed animals and imaginary pets, I really relate.
Did it really need a £7 million marketing push complete with book, smartphone app, and Twitter campaign? This was perhaps the moment that the Christmas advert cottage industry jumped the shark.
5) The Bear and the Hare, 2013
This advert didn’t get enough credit for being incredibly cute, genuinely heartwarming, and supporting the awe-inspiring level of craft that goes into animation. The illustration has shades of Watership Down about it, as a hare frets that their Bear bestie will hibernate all the way through the big day.
Luckily, they managed to nip to John Lewis and buy an alarm clock, so Bear gets to wonder at a multi-species animal Christmas. A few points knocked off for Lily Allen doing that faux working class accent she had going on back then in her cover of Keane’s Somewhere Only We Know. Although it does get stuck in my head still.
An absolute classic of the genre, with a cute kid waiting impatiently for Christmas soundtracked by Slow Moving Millie covering Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want by The Smiths.
Another certified weepy, and one with an incredible message. An obviously dad-coded man spends the run-up to Christmas attempting to learn how to skateboard. Is this a pathetic attempt to recapture his youth? No, he is putting in the work to bond with his new foster daughter who arrives from the care system.
2) Buster the Boxer, 2016
There’s no sob-fest to be found here – just pure comedy. Sweet foxes and assorted urban vermin bounce merrily on a gifted trampoline, much to the chagrin of family pet Buster.
Vaults covers Randy Crawford’s Someday I’ll Fly away, with the soundtrack dropping out to hilarious effect as the camera cuts to family’s reaction to a big slobbery dog prancing on a trampoline.
We needed a good laugh in 2016 when this aired right before the first Trump presidency (scream). If you need me for the next four years I’ll be watching this on repeat and eating Celebrations.
And the winner is…. A Tribute to Givers, 2010
This is the ultimate Christmas advert in my eyes. I am entirely biased.
It’s 2010, and the first massive media row has broken out over a John Lewis advert. A boy is shown going out into the snow to give his dog a stocking. Britain is up in arms that a DOG has been left in the SNOW. The BBC is reporting that it glamorises dog neglect. The Dog’s Trust has condemned the kennel.
Smash cut to a family Christmas party where my great aunt, then head of PR for John Lewis, is the corner with a BlackBerry in each hand desperately doing crisis management. A spokesperson must come out and say that the deerhound was not harmed in the making of the advert. I am 14, and I am hooked on the drama.
Anyway, Ellie Golding does a nice enough cover of the Bee Gees How Deep Is Your Love. But this advert is the reason I am here writing listicles today for you, dear reader. I love mess!