It’s a Gap Christmas Flashback

I’ve always loved the Christmas season. I love the nostalgia it makes me feel for my childhood. I love the communal experience of it, how everyone shares in it in one way or another, the general feeling of warmth and community with my family and friends. And, I love how this feeling is extended when it’s incorporated into pop culture at-large. (If this post makes some people throw up for my shameless sentimentality, I’m sorry, but I’m sentimental about this) If it’s well done (that is, tasteful, not like a recent commercial where Santa Claus tries to buy sleigh, I’m sorry, car insurance. Groan!). One of my favorite examples of this is a series of commercials that Michel Gondry (director of the very good Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) created for the Gap in 1999.







Like the best Gap commercials, they are 30 second expressions of pure pop fun done in the most elegant way. They never stoop so low as to mention what is actually being sold (though, of course, the instant association of the brand with a broad cultural feeling is the point). They bring together a big-sounding version of the song Sleigh Ride (conducted by John Williams, I think) with, unexpectedly, yet wonderfully, Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice. To top it off, the kaleidoscopic images of people dancing and skating is so playful, and done with such freedom, that, to me, they feel joyful. These commercials are quintessentially modern without sacrificing a genuine Christmas feeling. I watch them every year.