Lifted from the comments,

That would be the advert currently trending for all the wrong reasons, and regarding which viewers’ feedback has now been disabled.

Hideous advert
Appeasement and entitlement
NOT what CHRISTMAS should be about; and definitely isn’t in my book.
Oh @JohnLewisRetail you’ve completely missed the point! https://t.co/O0OBNfaPiV

— Manda moo (@Warrioramira01) November 4, 2026

Says commenter Min,

Yes, they’ve often been rather sweet with an agreeable, universal sentiment. Missing friends, shyness, loneliness, not wanting to leave people out, etc. Hibernating bears. Machine-tooled emotional manipulation. Which is how a department-store Christmas ad should be.

This year, however, they’ve assumed we’ll be enchanted by rude, selfish, misbehaving children whose affection has to be bought with great effort and at great expense, in desperation. And the decision to make those children brown – because apparently you can’t have an advert without the statistically unlikely interracial couple – adds a dynamic that I somehow doubt was intended.

Commenter [+] quips,

What’s remarkable is that the project must have involved any number of highly-paid, supposedly clued-up experts, masters of nuance, and endless meetings, over months… and no bugger spotted how readily the ad lends itself to much less festive interpretations.

I watched it again this morning and am still processing just how weirdly misjudged it is.

For instance, that heartwarming moment when the scowling, diverse grandchildren shake their Christmas cards in annoyance, having found no money in them. Behaviour enabled, one assumes, by the ineffectual, unapologetic parents, who allow their offspring to wreck other people’s homes and to jump up and down on other people’s furniture.

And remember, we’re supposed to like these unparented brats, enough to care about pleasing them. And we’re supposed to identify with the grandma who wants these brats to love her, if only for a few minutes, before they presumably resume their scowling, ungrateful ways.

Feel that Christmas spirit, people.

It does rather suggest a gulf between, on the one hand, progressively-inclined John Lewis management and progressively-inclined London ad executives who think that sneaking trans flags into Christmas adverts watched by children is terribly clever – and on the other hand, actual John Lewis customers and the general public.

We’ve been here before, of course. When customers were expected to find charming the thought of their homes being trashed by a selfish, vamping, cross-dressing child.

And then there was the attempt to endear customers by announcing, very proudly, that they employ middle-aged transvestites with whipping fetishes because doing so results in “a better connection to our customers.” Thanks to these “identities we share.”

As I said at the time,

It’s hilariously insane. But in fairness, very now.

At risk of sounding old fashioned, if I were a parent and my child were being suspended with such regularity, I’d have questions about their behaviour.

I mean, if my child behaved in such a way as to result in their being suspended no fewer than thirty-seven times, I think I might be embarrassed, perhaps even ashamed. I don’t think I’d regard it as an obvious basis for a political flex or an air of self-righteousness.

While trying to deny other parents a chance to get their own children the hell away from kids like mine.

Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading, of course.

And in modern-hellscape news:

A terribly modern grievance, I think you’ll agree. Very now.

This is where we are, people. Everyone remember where we parked.

You see, Mr Buckley wanted to “have the experience of breastfeeding.” Hence the novelty breasts. Mr Buckley is also indignant that a woman, a mother of three and a breastfeeding counsellor, might regard such ambitions as a little odd, for a man, and not entirely in the interests of the newborn child.

And so,

And as we’re in the realm of squint-and-pretend:

The term lactation is, however, doing a lot of heavy lifting. Men who pretend to be women, and who take large doses of cross-sex hormones, subsequently developing facsimile breasts, are unlikely to lactate anything adequately nourishing for a child.

Given sufficiently high doses of female hormones, and given sufficiently zealous pumping, some men can be made to secrete a substance from their nipples, albeit unreliably and in very limited quantities – but the resulting discharge is of questionable value to a newborn baby:

As Dr Maja Bowen notes here,

Or, as lawyers for Ms Sussex put it,

At which point, it’s perhaps worth mentioning that the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal, where this very modern drama is unfolding, determined that Mr Buckley’s legal team “did not have to hand over medical evidence over the chemical makeup of the fluid” being forced upon his newborn child, and that such details, i.e., the facts of the matter, were “not of relevance” to claims of vilification.

Similarly “not of relevance,” it seems, are concerns that such secretions, induced by a cocktail of supposedly “gender-affirming” drugs, may have harmful effects on newborn babies, including possible heart problems and genital development.

And so, either we have a man who believes that he can secrete suitably nourishing fluids from his nipples, or a man who knows that he can’t in fact do this, but is determined to indulge his bizarre preoccupation anyway, despite the warnings of attending medical professionals, and regardless of the effect on a newborn baby:

Mr Buckley has also announced that “experiencing arousal while breastfeeding” is “nothing to be ashamed of.”

Which possibly tells us something about the motivations in play.

The results can be… revealing:

You see, caring about your family, your ancestors, your lineage, your children, is “actually absurd,” apparently. And by implication, some kinds of context – where you came from, say – are to be scorned as worthless.

An earlier, related exchange comes to mind:

One more time:

I’m guessing that’s some kind of progressive metaphysics.

Though I doubt mere obliviousness would fully explain this phenomenon. There’s an element of contrivance, of affectation and perversity.

Mr Convente is currently invoking victimhood – because people have read his pronouncements and have either laughed or pointed out why those pronouncements are unconvincing. Mr Convente is also calling Mr Burkett various vulgar terms and is insinuating some nefarious racial motive, despite offering no actual evidence to that effect.

Because if you pause to consider the physical basis of family, even in measured terms, and if you point out the logical idiocy of the “It’s only by chance you were born to said ancestors” school of thought, seemingly favoured by so many progressives, then this can only be explained by some seething racial animus. Apparently.

Mr Convente also declares, with some pride, “I don’t want kids.” Being, as he puts it, “too selfish.”

Our Betters, ladies and gentlemen. See their pieties shine.

Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading, of course.

“Open borders” advocate Nicholas Decker shares his thoughts on totally progressive fatherhood:

So far, so good. If not exactly newsworthy. Perhaps a twist is coming, some needless contrivance.

Ah.

There we go. Not sure if watching is involved.

It seems we’re expected to follow Mr Decker’s lead, into that glorious tomorrow, where cuckoldry is ascendant, an ideal, and where fathers and their children are biologically disconnected and physically estranged. Because that always goes smoothly. No issues there. There follows a rather flattened understanding of genetics, and much convoluted fretting, but the gist is,

At which point, readers may be wondering if there’s something wrong with Mr Decker. I mean, some debilitating condition that he would rather not pass on.

I sense a looming but.

It strikes me as a little odd, in terms of hypothetical fatherhood, comparing one’s own as-yet-unknown potential in that regard against some entirely abstract ideal, the particulars of which remain unclear. Fatherhood, I’ve been told, more than once, is very much a process of discovery, and indeed self-discovery.

I’m reminded of the boastfully oblivious noises poked at here. From childless progressives who claimed to view any hypothetical parenting on their part, the birth of a child, as some arbitrary occurrence, unmoored from any biological inheritance or preceding events. Childless progressives who were seemingly unfamiliar with the strange pleasure of seeing one’s children develop the features and attributes of oneself, one’s partner, and various relatives.

However,

Bodes well.

He cares quite a lot about other people, you see. Just not his own family. Hence pursuing biological disconnection, the breaking of lineage and ancestry. At which point, any passing psychiatrists are welcome to chip in.

And then, of course, there’s the issue of whether biological connectedness might be statistically optimal in terms of parenting, engagement, avoiding neglect, and so forth. As available data would suggest. And which would seem to have bearing on any child’s odds of flourishing and happiness.

Needless to say, replies to Mr Decker on X have been lively: