Image from SustainableIsGood
I watch very little television and increasingly less as the years go by. Full disclosure: my cousin Pete and I watched 9 hours of the Newhart marathon on Thanksgiving Day! That's when I saw for the first time this seasonal commercial for Pampers.
A little Googling tells me that this ad has been used by Pampers since 2005 and the response out there on the net has been largely positive.
I've always been at least a little offended by hearing Christmas carols I sing at Mass played as background for shopping at supermarkets, department and big box stores. But this one tops them all. If you haven't followed the link, let me tell you that a vocal of Silent Night runs over still photos of sleeping babies - for Pampers' commercial purposes.
Yes, I know the ad has been connected to charitable causes, too, but the bottom line is: this is a commercial for disposable diapers.
In some quarters there's great support for returning the word "Christmas" to advertising venues in lieu of what had become the obligatory "holidays." I'm not convinced, however, that this is a step in the right direction. Do we want the popular name (Christmas) for this important Christian feast (Solemnity of the Navitivy of Our Lord Jesus Christ) to be featured for commercial ends?
So, a couple of questions for you:
1) Am I being a curmudgeon about this? Too thin-skinned?
2) Do you or don't you have a problem with this kind of advertising?
3) What Christmas ads have offended you?
4) What's the best Christmas advertising you've seen or heard?
5) Would you just rather slam me and my cousin for watching all that Newhart?
-ConcordPastor
Your not a crumudgeon, alot of people including myself are tired of the commercialism.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid since its profit driven there's no avoiding / stopping it.
I watch very little t.v. too and record the shows I watch... equals no advertisements!
Newhart? Hmmmm.... in college we used his show for a drinking game. Every time someone said "Bob" we had to drink.
That's alot of Bobs.
I guess it's not a battle that I would choose to fight. I don't like the commercial either (and many others at this time of year) but there's not much we can do about it so simply use the remote "mute" button and go check out what's in the fridge.
ReplyDeleteAnne
Well, it's not a battle I intend to fight, either, Anne. But if I can raise a little consciousness - I'll consider that a step in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteJust for the record: my cousin and I did NOT watch Newhart as a drinking game!
ReplyDeleteI watched the ad...and personally I quite liked it. I didn't find the Pampers bit too intrusive at the end. The baby shots I found were beautiful - celebratory of new life. I know several people with new babies at present, and the ad just reminded me of the joy they have with the babies that have entered their families.
ReplyDeleteChristmas is commercial, and carols will continue to be played in supermarkets. I think we each have to find our own ways to step away from that commercialism and bring some sanity to it all.
My mind is so boggled at 9 hours of Newhart (OK, he was funny, but 9 HRS !) that I can hardly think about pampers & commercialism!
ReplyDeleteHope you had a real good Thanksgiving & vacation time (other than TV) with your relatives.
I think you are right, Kiwi.
ReplyDeleteI think too much emphasis on the negativity of the season, just plainly makes people feel bad and sad.
I think instead of telling people how we should think of the poor and needy all year long, (which is very true!), we should make it clear how much the help we get around the holidays means so much to others and helps. Concentrate on the positive! Look at how much people do, not at what that don't do.
I am trying to do this with my own family. I'm trying to be positive about Christmas... no matter how sad I may feel inside. I want to spread the goodness ... rather than the sadness.
Concord Pastor,
ReplyDelete"Nine hours" jumped out at me so I roared laughing when I saw option #5, however, I think I'd better be careful before casting any stones at anyone's TV habits!
Maybe you should have played the drinking game and the commercial wouldn't have bothered you so much...of course I am just kidding!
ReplyDeleteIn the scheme of things and the trials I have been through in my humble little life commercials don't upset me. I try not to get too caught up in things like that...instead as Gandhi would say,"be the change you want to see in the world" In the end that's really all I have.
Perhaps I'm just thicker-skinned, but I don't have an issue with that particular commercial. I think it's nice to see real babies with Christmas music to bring home the fact that Jesus was once really a baby, with a new young mom and dad, and that they went through the same life experiences that all new parents go through. It makes the Holy Family more approachable. But that's just me. Best Christmas commercial?? Isn't at Christmas--the dad singing "It's the most wonderful time of the year..." through the aisles of an office supply store buying go-back-to-school necessities. Makes me laugh every year.
ReplyDeleteTwo thoughts~
ReplyDeleteI can lighten up a but it on the generic "holidays" when I see it is an attempt to be a broader and more inclusive greeting, not just regarding faith traditions (Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Diwali (?)) but Thanksgiving, New Year's etc.
I am aware that the bulk of the music and things with which we deck our halls relate to Christmas traditions...but maybe rather than take offense at the Musak versions of Silent Night being piped into every commercial cavity, we can see it as the Holy Spirit working in mysterious ways -- subliminal spiritual advertising, perhaps -- the hardest heart cannot help but hear the melodies and connect back with the images, words and message they suggest.
On the Newhart front, I'm a big fan, especially of the Bob/Tom Poston "Danny Boy" episode. But I hope that you took a few breaks to get some exercise!!!!!! -- Your health (and your heart) are WAY too important to us, your sheep, and I'm sure that you wouldn't endorse nine hours of uninterrupted sitting to the kids out there -- that's where my curmudgeon begins to surface!
Well, I haven't seen the commercial and I'm sure it is seductive but that is just the problem with commericialism: it leads us to thinking that we really need the items being advertised. It is insidious. I think the ultimate expression of that is the stampede at WalMart's. Those people really thought they needed those products...apparently enough to trample someone to death.
ReplyDeleteNot to worry about me and too much TV. As I sat watching the Newhart marathon various family members passed in and out of the den and the conversation often turned to, "Do you watch...? - Have you seen the show...?" In every case I answered no because I just don't watch television - haven't since I started writing this blog!
ReplyDeleteI must confess I haven't seen the Pampers ad because I rarely see commercials anymore, thanks to the miracle of DVR recorders built into cable boxes. ;-) But our faith is an incarnational one, and the idea of listening to "Silent Night" while watching beautiful human babies sleep warms my heart. And if those babies sleep better because of the quality of their diapers, well thanks be to God!
ReplyDeleteAs to "holidays" vs "Christmas," the fact is that there are several holy days or stretches of time celebrated this time of year: solstice, Christmas, Yule, Kwanzaa, Ramadan (some years), and the Santa Claus thing. What we celebrate in my house is some amalgam of a few of those.
I recognize that Christmas is placed in the calendar where it is because the early Christians wanted to co-opt Saturnalia, and people were going to celebrate the returning of the light, so Christianity had better get on board or lose some power! We've *never* owned December. When I decorate my house with greens, I recognize that I'm reflecting Yule, and I delight in honoring the earth. When I go to church on Christmas morning and share Eucharist with homeless people on Boston Common, I know I'm celebrating the birth of the Christ Child. When my sister, brother-in-law, and niece arrive late on Christmas afternoon to stay for two days of eating, opening gifts, watching movies, more eating, and hanging out together, we're celebrating incarnation -- that we are embodied beings with many senses and big warm hearts.
Rather than complain that Christmas is being corrupted or diluted, I'd rather say, "The more traditions the merrier!" and pull from each strain what works for us. There are stories of crazy consumerism all year around. Capitalism run rampant has trashed our national economy. Greed drove the leaders of our country to invade a sovereign nation with a cost of thousands, maybe millions, of lives and the irreversible destruction of so much. Those influences are there always.
Maybe you are a curmudgeon! You certainly taught me well about how to celebrate Advent in Advent and Christmas in Christmas. This time of year I'm a communicant in many religious and cultural strains, though. No-one's stolen our holy day. We're just bumping elbows with other celebrations -- and with the brokenness of life.
I do not watch much TV and what I do watch is mainly on PBS...so no commercials. However, I just read that one of the Super Bowl ads is going to be about the raising of a Clydesdale in Scotland. The shot pictured looked to be circa 1940s. That commercial I would like to see!
ReplyDeleteWell, not a curmudgeon necessarily, but I (haven't seen the commercial) would consider whether there was some malevolence toward Catholics or even an (unthinking) slight of a hallowed carol. I heard on a supermarket musak system a rendition of a carol (maybe it was this one) that was in the vein of what some "performers" are doing to the Star Spangled Banner at the seventh inning stretch. Hey, this isn't Kansas anymore!
ReplyDeleteNo TV, so I haven't seen many commercials in the last year much less the seasonal onslaught.
ReplyDeleteThe "Bratz" song I heard on the speakers at KMart today was more appalling -- the chorus was something like "gimme gimme gimme gimme (something something) Santa Claus". If the crassest ad I heard or saw was the Pampers one, we'd be in a far better place already.
The news about the WalMart employee brought me to tears this morning. That's sick and horrible.
Ed, were the composer or the author of "Silent Night" Catholic? I would have thought Lutheran. ???
ReplyDeleteFrom Wikipedia:
ReplyDeleteFranz Xaver Gruber (November 25, 1787–June 7, 1863), was an Austrian primary school teacher and church organist in the village of Arnsdorf. At the same time he was organist and choirmaster at St. Nicholas Church in the neighboring village of Oberndorf and then in later years moved on to Hallein, Salzburg.
Together with Josef Mohr (original German lyrics), a Catholic priest, Gruber composed the Christmas carol Silent Night. On December 24, 1818, Mohr, an assistant pastor at St. Nicholas, showed Gruber a six-stanza poem he had written in 1816. He asked Gruber to write a melody and guitar arrangement for the poem. At Christmas Mass, while Mohr played his guitar, the two men sang "Stille Nacht" for the first time. The St. Nicholas choir repeated the last two lines of each verse.
In later years, Gruber wrote additional arrangements of the carol for organ and for organ with orchestra. He wrote dozens of other carols and masses. Many are still in print and are sung today in Austrian churches.
If it makes people more comfortable to refer to the 'holidays', then I don't understand why some take such offense to it. As I've never lived as a true religious minority, then I can't truly understand how this ad would make others feel. Had they chosen a more generic message, I wouldn't have seen it as downplaying the importance of Christmas at all.
ReplyDeleteThanks for looking up the info on those who gave us "Silent Night," Concord Pastor!
ReplyDeleteOne more question: Was it really what the armies in the opposing trenches sang to each other on Christmas Eve during WWI? Or am I just remembering how one film maker imagined that holy moment in history?
No, no, you're busy. I did it myself. Yes, it was. It was in 1914, and Jim Wallis (of Sojourner) references it at http://www.thesocialistparty.org/spo/archive/reviews/trenches.html .
I commend the story to everyone this (upcoming) Christmas season. May all our aggression take a time out to honor the Divine whom we know through signs of beauty and peace. Maybe we don't really need to take up the tools of violence again afterwards? Just a thought.
I think mmy favorite Christmas commercial was years ago when Coca Cola did the one with people of all ethnicities holding candles...they sang "I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony"...and it ended with the people forming a Christmas tree...while there was no doubt it was an ad for Coke, it was rather uplifting and hopeful...
ReplyDelete9 hours of Newhart though??? I couldn't imagine it...however 9 hours of ER would keep me riveted!!! LOL