From Macy’s to #MozTheMonster: How John Lewis conquered Christmas creep

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#MozTheMonster, book, Christmas, John Lewis, Macys, Selfridges, Shopping

I woke this morning to find that Christmas had started. One of those markers in the sand had been reached. We’ve crossed the Rubicon. No going back. The John Lewis Christmas ad is here (#MozTheMonster). (I feel I have to add the hashtag after saying that, like some kind of compulsory religious honorific. Like the sentence doesn’t carry the full weight unless you had the Moz bit.) If you’ve not seen it yet, well you know can – which according to some pals, means we can now play Christmas music, eat Terry’s Chocolate Orange till we turn orange, and generally claim now as Christmas.

John Lewis’ 2017 Christmas ad #MozTheMonster pic.twitter.com/c7qPyD9ICE

— @johnlewisretail November 10, 2017

I disagree. Much as I love Christmas enough to write a book about all things Christmas past, for me, Christmas music starts December 1st. And even then, you need to be gradual before going full Christmas. Festive jumpers only a fortnight before (if then – and it should always be worn ironically). Be sparing in your chocolate orange.

The stuff of nightmares. Or dreams. TBC.

Moz is the latest incarnation of several years of John Lewis riding high. How have we reached this point where we’re stopping work to click on Youtube to watch an advert – and not only that, but before the advert, we might even be made to watch another advert? And how is it that a fluffy character in commercial is somehow waving the starting-pistol for the Christmas season? (I wouldn’t trust #MozTheMonster with a starting-pistol – oh my, I’m falling for it…)

I trace it back to Rowland Macy and to the invention of plate glass. Macy started one of the first department stores, called, coincidentally, Macy’s. What started as farm goods and supplies quickly grew, into a store so big that it needed different departments (hence the name). Meanwhile the arrival (and cheapness) of plate glass meant we could finally see in shop windows, rather than have to go in or know in advance what would be stocked. This was of course vital for a shop that sold so much, that you wouldn’t know that on the 3rd floor there was something you never knew you wanted… unless you could see it in the window. So he accidentally – or deliberately – invented window-shopping.

One of the first Christmas window displays. They weren’t just queuing up to see a naked mannequin for the first time.

Rowland Hussey Macy created the first ever festive window display, based on scenes from the book Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It was a hit. Rival stores picked up on the idea too. When Gordon Selfridge set up his store in London, he took the idea too, and then Harrod’s down the road muscled in on it too. Before you know it, you have Christmas creep – each store trying to get their festive window display up and ready before their neighbours.

Because they were huge hits. People would travel into the city after a hard day of work, just to see the window displays – and thanks to electricity they could be powered and brilliant well into the dark evenings. Often they couldn’t afford anything in the shop – but this was free festive entertainment. But that was okay by Macy and co – window-shopping meant aspiration, and aspiration meant a hunger for buying things, so those who could would spend more and more on what they could afford in-store.

‘Christmas creep’ was definitely a thing: displays gradually went up earlier, lights were switched on earlier. Oxford Street’s famed lights were turned on a full three weeks earlier in the 1990s than in the 1950s. Getting one over on the rivals it what causes Tesco’s to stock mince pies in the summer (allegedly – for my Christmas book launch I promised mince pies in September, and couldn’t find a pack anywhere… thankfully my wife makes excellent mince pies).

Father Christmas is here. NOT Santa. Must be London then.

Shop-owners tried all sorts to win over customers – even hiring in Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali to create window displays. Some of their ideas became legacies still with us today. Macy himself was one of the first to offer a money-back guarantee in January, and added the first in-store Santa from 1862. He didn’t have a grotto yet though – just roamed the store wild. The first grotto appeared in East London in 1888, in J. P. Robert’s store, before even Selfridge’s appeared. When he did set up shop, Selfridge coined the phrase “only X shopping days till Christmas” (though he had the BRILLIANT idea to replace X with a series of steadily decreasing numbers).

Stores not blessed by world-renowned artists benefitted from technological advancements: mechanical characters, rising platforms, and frosted snow scenes were mainstays of stores in London, New York, and Chicago. In the 1950s, Woodward & Lothrop’s of Washington D.C. even featured live penguins in their window.

Which brings us back to John Lewis, and their fluffy animal fix. From penguins to #MozTheMonster (I’ve got Compulsive Hashtag Disorder), they’ve tapped into the family Christmas – which lest we forget, has only been family-oriented since St Nicholas became Santa Claus in the 1820s (that’s for another blog) – like no one else. In Britain at least. I’m British. We might need an American blog to tell us Walmart’s equivalent.

But over here, the starting pistol has been fired. While we’re watching cute characters get Christmassy on Youtube (once the ads before the ads have stopped playing), the shops are hoping we’ll turn that into sales. And I’m sure we will – Christmas creep has now crept in new days into our festive calendar. Alongside Advent Sunday and Stir-Up Sunday, we now have Black Friday, Cyber Monday, even Take-Back Tuesday (a true legacy of Macy’s money-back guarantee)… but also ‘Buy Nothing Day’, organised by counter-commercial Christmas fans.

Whatever we’re buying, it looks like John Lewis has decided that the Christmas season may now commence. So, Merry ChristMoz. Ugh. I’ve done it again.

The new book Hark! The Biography of Christmas is available on the highlighted link, just there. It’s all about sales, people (that’s Moz’s unheard catchphrase).

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The Missing Page 10

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book, Genesis

My new book Genesis is now officially… out. If you’ve bought one, thanks. Please do leave the kindest review you can muster on Amazon, or indeed just tell folks if you liked it. If you haven’t bought one, well don’t worry, you’ve been busy.

A few folks read some advance bits – a crack team of brilliant proof-reading friends. I thank them from the bottom of my heart for their time dotting ‘t’s and crossing ‘i’s. No one read all of it, just bits, not to safeguard or anything (we’re not in JK Rowling territory here, and any plot secrets are already out there. Sorry to break it to you folks, but Cain kills Abel, Noah gets a bit rained on, and Abe doesn’t sacrifice his son – SPOILER ALERT), but so as not to bombard anyone with too much proofing to do.

Unfortunately I didn’t send the Foreward to anyone to proof-read (even though it opens the book, part of your brain is saying, “It’s only the Foreward.”) – a mistake, it now seems. Somewhere between me submitting the original manuscript to the publishers and the big book factory clicking print on several thousand copies, a whole page of the Foreward sort of… vanished. Looking back, every draft the publisher had send back to me for checking had it absent. A page had vanished, and I hadn’t even noticed. It’s my fault, and in my defence, the baby’s been waking all hours. But rest assured the rest of the book is thoroughly checked, proofed and accurate (except at the top of page 33 it says ‘Cain’ when it should say ‘Abel’ – oh I might as well start again…).

We all know Forewards just get in the way of the actual book in any case. Perhaps this was the Good Lord’s way of saying, “Paul, you don’t need that bit. You should have asked Me to edit your book.” (NB: Not sure if God would capitalise Himself as ‘Me’ – must ask a proof-reader) So on the upside, the actual book kicks off a little more quickly than it otherwise would have. But alas it means the thankyous are lost, unless I handwrite them in each book (which is what a truly thankful person would do, but unfortunately I can’t find a pen).

So to the proof-readers, I apologise. I’ll make it up to you in the next book, if there is a next book. Know that I did write a big ol’ thankyou, and should anyone want to read it, here it is below. It does of course follow on from the first page of the Foreward, so, you know, if you’ve got a book already, maybe print this bit out and glue it in on page 10. It begins with my explanatory notes on what I was trying to undertake…

I’ve left very little out, and goodness knows I’ve thrown a few bits in. Trust me, Genesis has no reference to Adam & Eve sharing a flat, or God calling a technical support helpline before The Flood. There was never a Sodom & Gomorrah edition of Come Dine With Me, and as far as I’m aware Joseph never appeared on The Apprentice. Throughout I draw on various translations and commentaries, and I’ve even gone back to the ancient Hebrew, who said, ‘Oy gevalt, who you calling ancient, you shmendrik!’

A thousand thankyous to my patient wife and kids during this undertaking, and to my folks and in-laws for extended periods of childcare. As for the proofreaders, their worth they’re wait in gold. So thanks Mark Woodward, Jon Holloway and James & Tabitha Smith. And thanks to Helen & Robin Bateman, whose names I left out of the foreward for my previous book (which is, of course, still available). Thanks too to David Moloney and all on the DLT ark, and Nick Ranceford-Hadley and the tribe of Noel Gay.

…And yes I appreciate the irony that this included a thankyou to two people who I forgot to thank in the first book. So their thankyou for book 1 will now appear in book 3.

So that’s what happened to the missing page 10. As for the other 127 pages, you’ll have to buy one… http://www.amazon.co.uk/Genesis-Bibluffers-optimistic-66-part-collection/dp/0232530750/

 

When I surveyed the wondrous cross-section of UK Christianity

Tags

book, church, radio 2, survey

The Church of England apparently got in a bit of hot water with a prayer survey they’ve undertaken. Well we’re all about God of God, Light of Light, not poll of polls. And it’s very difficult to count results when you’re doing a prayer survey – a lot of people are kneeling, and you don’t know if someone’s hand in the air means they’re saying yes to your question or maybe they’re a Pentecostal.

For my book (out yesterday, Amazon link here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/So-Comedian-Walks-Into-Church/dp/0232529795/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362738146&sr=8-1, but I’d recommend the independent non-tax-avoiding Hive link here: http://www.hive.co.uk/book/so-a-comedian-walks-into-a-church-confessions-of-a-kneel-down-stand-up/16927686/), I conducted a survey too.

Its results form the epilogue of the book, but here are some nuggets that my 268 respondents told me:

49% are Anglican 

30% are Evangelical

21% are Charismatic

18% are Baptist 

16% are Methodist

7% are Pentecostal

4% are Roman Catholic

…Wow, add that up and that means 145% of people are churchgoers. Oh, except there’s some overlap of each category, because some are Evangelical Anglicans, and some are Roman Catholic Methodists (not many, granted). Oh, and I deliberately targeted the survey at churchgoers, so that’s why there are so few atheists and Jedis.

Other findings:

 

Descriptions of church ranged ‘growing church-plants’ (presumably like hydrangias) to High Anglican ‘bells and smells’, via ‘Anglo-Catholic mixed with Charismatic Evangelical’, ‘Post-evangelical’ and even the baffling ‘Revangelical’, which must either mean that it’s evangelical again, or that it’s a spelling mistake. Some were part of ‘church without walls’: groups in cafés, or a market traders’ church, or what one described as ‘radical panto-style’.

Some commented to me that Christianity could be let down by ritualistic ‘Sunday-only Christians’. 71% said that ‘church’ happens on Monday to Saturday, more than on Sundays. Yet Sundays were still seen as sacred: ‘I’d like ‘Happy Sunday’ to become a regular expression, like ‘Happy Christmas’,’ said one surveyee.

76% thought their church focused strongly on biblical teaching, while 19% felt it not to be a priority, with a further 5% who said the Bible was barely taught at all. The statistics were similar for sung worship and prayer.

Most said that instead, the emphases of their churches were on serving the local community and welcoming newcomers. It meant that half felt church wasn’t challenging enough, but there was a real sense that local church should be a hub of help. Some said we could go further: ‘We’re too concerned with ‘style of worship’ or the colour of the floor. We need to be serving the community around us.’

The modern need of a food bank is a topic I bring up on tomorrow’s Pause For Thought – catch it on Radio 2 at 5:45am, or more likely, Listen Again. And you can hear me further waffling about Christianity and comedy in a BBC1 documentary tomorrow (Wednesday 27th April) at 11:05pm. 

One day I’ll get around to putting more of these survey results up here. For now though I’ve just got to ask: what in the world is radical panto-style church? (The devil? “He’s behind you!” “Oh no he isn’t.” “Oh yes he is…”)

Religiocomedy + lots of plugs

Tags

book, Comedy, Pause For Thought, Religion

It’s a big day for me and religiocomedy. Today I not only preached to the nation (well, a few truckers) in the coveted 5:45am slot of Radio 2’s Pause For Thought (listen again from 44:30 here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01r4xxq – I’m after Ladies Night, which is how it should be), but also did similarly in text form via the 40Acts website –  http://40acts.org.uk/blog/share-a-good-joke/.

They’re setting 40 challenges each day for Lent: rather than give something up, give something out. So today I’m ‘challenging’ people to share a good joke. May not sound like much of a challenge – it wouldn’t last a full hour of Challenge Anneka where they paint a ceiling or something – but then I’ve heard some people at gigs try jokes on me, and clearly they found it very challenging. “Here’s one for ya… There was a nun, a Muslim and a… no hang on, not a nun – a plumber…”

Both these Christiocomedic serherhermons come one week before my book hits shelves (or shelf): So A Comedian Walks Into A Church. There’s a theme here: comedy and Christianity trying to work together. It’s a very narrow overlap on the Venn diagram, but it’s there – after all, vicar and stand-up comic both are used to performing to people who’ve been dragged along, trying to hold the attention while the microphone breaks, and starting their piece with a couple of dodgy jokes.

So it looks this is the year I ‘come out’ (as a Christian, not as a homosexual – that’ll be years away yet). Not that I’ve ever hidden my faith on the circuit – I just don’t profess it from the mic, cos, well, it’s not that funny. If I find an angle, I’ll do what I can with it, but for now apart from the odd car journey if it comes up (whereupon it’s become a very odd car journey), I’ve kept the church gigs and the circuit gigs pretty much separate.

Non-churchy people: fear not. I’m not about to use the microphone/keyboard to sneak bits of God into stand-up routines/sitcom scripts. I’ll sneak bits of me in, because that’s what all writers do. That’s unavoidable, and necessary, and nice.

So…

…for the next 5 Wednesdays, you can hear me at 5:45am on Radio 2’s Pause For Thought, or more likely, on iPlayer thereafter.

…you can buy my book about church and the comedy circuit, from next Wednesday (or pre-order now: http://www.darton-longman-todd.co.uk/books/9780232529791/So-A-Comedian-Walks-Into-a-Church).

….you can see me on BBC1 during Easter Week chatting to Ann Widdecombe about Christianity and comedy, and where the line is, and if there’s a line at all. Basically you won’t be able to move for me waffling on about gags & God, punchlines & pews, pulpits & bearpits, (Subscribe here http://paulkerensa.com/lists/?p=subscribe&id=1 to my mailing list for details of all this nonsense)

What I’m really saying is, vote Kerensa for Pope. I may not be Catholic but I do like ceilings with nice pictures on. Simply put, I miss Challenge Anneka.