If you really concentrate, John Lewis’s Christmas ad could make you cry

What a lovely ritual the John Lewis advert has become. Every November, many of us huddle around our phones to test just how much the retailer can make us cry. The rest of the day is spent tweeting and/or debating with our colleagues and friends about how much we blubbed.

You might be able to squeeze out a few tears over this year’s effort – but only if you concentrate really hard. It’s too much of a chronological mishmash to get your head around, and no Christmas advert should require this level of focus.

Picture the scene (and please bear with me): John Lewis, Oxford Street. Fifteen minutes before closing. Sally, a young woman who looks like she’s been plucked from a Richard Curtis romcom, is frantically looking for a festive gift for her sister, Lauren. She falls through a rack of tulle dresses and is propelled through a gargantuan wardrobe into her childhood home, Narnia-style, from where she goes on a nostalgic journey through her memories to find the perfect pressie against the clock.

In their family’s attic, Sally opens a treasure chest containing sentimental keepsakes, and we meet Lauren at several ages: as a cute cowboy-hat-wearing child, a moody teenager variously having tantrums and snogging boys in her bedroom, in her early twenties just back from university, and when she’s pregnant with her first child. This is the easy bit to follow. The girls have a textbook sisterly argument over who stole whose top when we see Lauren as a teenager, and they embrace in the pub as adults.

But things become confusing when Lauren transforms back into a child again (bearing in mind that Sally remains the same age throughout). The girl then whispers something inaudible into Sally’s ear, giving Sally the eureka moment she has been searching for all along. She climbs back through the wardrobe into John Lewis, and leaves with a wrapped box in hand, incredibly pleased with herself.

Waiting for Sally outside is a modern-day Lauren, who asks, “What took you so long?” to which Sally lovingly answers, “You!” Then, in another convoluted moment, as the sisters walk away, the child version of Lauren is oddly abandoned in the window display behind them. It closes with the strapline: “The secret to finding the perfect gift? Knowing where to look.”

You do really have to look at this advert to fully understand it. You’d be forgiven for missing these intricate details upon the first watch; it took me about three or four goes to get the full gist. At first, you might wonder, is Sally just buying a present for her kid sister, or is that her child? Oh wait, now that sister is pregnant… but why is she young again? And who abandoned that poor little girl in the shop window?! There’s too much going on – especially as an ad is typically consumed while multitasking and refilling your mulled wine during the commercial break. (It turns out the child isn’t ditched, it’s Sally seeing a flash of her memories, by the way).

There are a lot of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments that overstuff this fleeting, two-minute-long advert like a Christmas turkey. At one point, Sally solemnly watches as her sister and mum dance together in the kitchen, and Sally’s mournful reaction suggests that their mother might have died. But then we quickly move on.

Hit replay enough times, though, and the advert is a touching homage to sisterly bonds. It also reflects the familiar, slightly frenzied thought process we have when thinking up a gift idea for a loved one and searching through all of our shared interactions for tiny clues.

But in the end, it simply can’t contend with last year’s advert, which featured an adorable Venus fly trap, called Snapper, as its protagonist. It was a classic tale of an anthropomorphic creature befriending a small child – a foolproof method that really worked. This year, John Lewis decided to directly feature its own store in its festive advert for the first time, which feels like it breaks the fourth wall a little. JL commercials have always kept it quite classy by not actually bashing us over the head with its branding – but you can’t escape their signage in this one.

Another cop-out is the song, which isn’t a specially composed score or cover, but Richard Ashcroft’s acoustic recording of The Verve’s 1997 track “Sonnet”. Sure, some viewers will find it nostalgic but I miss the days when a John Lewis ad had a twinkly, saccharine Elton John cover that caters to all ages.

And the most frustrating part? After all that faffing around, we never find out what Sally bought for Lauren. Maybe it was a bauble. Or a Le Creuset dish. Perhaps she could have found a top that looked just like the one they argued over all those years ago. Like a wintery day, the ad left me cold. And with so many questions.