Daddy Will Be Home for Christmas
By: Maria Gregoriou
Tags: Advertising, Christmas, Parenting, Family, Fatherhood

’Tis the season for lots of advertisements that pull on our heartstrings and make us all feel warm inside. This year though, the world needs the warm feeling a little more than other years as we can’t all be together. The message may be somewhat different this year but some brands and advertising agencies still persist in portraying old ideas in a world where everything is changing and our mentality will never be the same again.

There are lots of adverts out there, most of them concentrating on family because, well, family is what Christmas is all about — and not consumerism or market share. There is one about a mum singing to her child over the phone by the time she gets to work for her night shift as a nurse in a COVID unit, and others about a grandfather who is willing to put on a show for his granddaughter to watch via a video chat on the phone. The telecommunication industry must think it has hit gold this year — if it wasn’t for them, we would all need physiological help around this time of year especially.

But two adverts really stuck out for me. The first has a father discover he forgot his daughter’s letter to Santa in his lunch box while at work. Not wanting her request to not be fulfilled, he runs around the world to deliver the letter in person. Santa is not there and a mysterious truck drives him back home where he finds out the letter asked Santa to bring Daddy home for Christmas. The other show’s a Dad coming home from work and at that very moment, his son’s drawing is blown out of the window. So what does he do? He puts his son in the car and they chase the drawing from the city to the forest until the Dad rescues it from a tree, and what do you think it says? Of course, it is another letter to Santa saying that the child wishes for a trip with Dad.

Dads go to work, work overtime, come home to mums putting up Christmas trees while making sure their children get everything their hearts desire. They are the heroes of the stories, work all day, work away from home, work, work, work so their offspring can get the gift they want from Santa, but really all the kids want is to spend time with their Dads because it is a given that they spend time with their mums right?

If they are lucky enough to work right now this may be the case, but in many households right now Dads are at home taking care of the kids while the mum is working. This is what it is like in my household right now. The Dad makes the milk for our one-year-old in the morning, he makes sure our seven-year-old gets to school on time and he is picked up after. He puts the baby down for her nap, feeds her, plays with her, and then helps our eldest with his homework. He then takes our son to speech therapy and takes it upon himself to speak with other parents and arrange playdates and is part of the parents’ committee. He is right there, at home and not on a wish list. He does not go around the world looking for Santa or goes on a magical trip with our son in a super-duper car, he is right there. And you know what, our son has not asked for one thing from Santa.

Then there is an old advert about a man doing everything around the house while the mum just comes home from work and relaxes. So we feel sorry for him and are then asked if it was a woman doing it all, would we have thought about it twice?

I am not focusing on the battle of the sexes and I am certainly not saying that one parent should take it all on. I have been through times when the Dad of the house and myself were working and I felt like I had to do it all myself. That is where the old ideas come into play — a woman can do it all, leave it up to her. She can’t and Dads can’t but if a father is at home and out of work, don’t make him feel bad because he is not providing for his family in the traditional sense, he is providing for his family in so many other ways. Money comes and goes and, unfortunately, so do some parents. Let’s see if next year the adverts that make us cry at Christmas time will be just a little bit more inclusive of other family circumstances.