If you have an issue with the Sainsbury’s Christmas advert, you’re racist

On Saturday, Sainsbury’s released their first of three Christmas adverts ahead of the festive season. The advert, titled “Gravy Song” featured a phone call between a father and daughter who couldn’t wait to be back home with her family for Christmas, hoping to spend it with her family.

The advert continues with home video footage over the phone call, where they both remember back to memories of prior Christmas festivities, including the father’s famous gravy to which he begins to sing: “Hey you, what’s going down? Gravy boat, Gravy boat, coming to town.”

Despite the advert being incredibly uncontroversial – its tagline is literally “Food is home, home is Christmas” – some people had a real issue with Sainsbury’s for making the advert. Why? Because it’s a Black family. That’s literally it.

Twitter users argued that the advert did not represent them, calling out the supermarket for “virtue signalling”. Seriously? I dread to think of their responses to Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot if a family enjoying Christmas doesn’t represent them.

One Twitter user replied to the Sainsbury’s ad asking why the advert doesn’t represent the majority. They tweeted: “So the UK is 86 per cent white, yet 94 per cent of ads are aimed at BAME, showing either black or mixed race. May I ask what ads represent the majority or has the ad world crapped its woke pants?”

But Gavin – I’m assuming this man’s name is Gavin – may I ask you why adverts shouldn’t be allowed to represent minorities in the UK? Growing up, I would have loved to see a Christmas advert of a family that looked like mine or somebody who looked like me, yet there wasn’t. I didn’t go on a rampage about it, calling out Argos for having an advert about aliens and none about a mixed-race family. In recent years, it’s been delightful to see families that look like mine and others in adverts celebrating Christmas, yet certain people will never be able to accept that shocker, not only white people celebrate Christmas!

Another user went so much as to boycott the supermarket, tweeting: “Another reason to boycott @sainsburys.”

I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t think your boycott is going to affect them in the slightest. If your reason to boycott a supermarket is because of an advert of a Black family celebrating Christmas, your racism is slipping. What is so wrong with a non-white family celebrating over the festive period?

Another Twitter user put simply: “Absolutely sickening.”

I think what is absolutely sickening is that you find a harmless advert about bringing people together during Christmas time over a shared love of food and family unacceptable because of the race of the actors involved.

One thing these comments all have in common is the racial undertone they all bear. Each and every one of them has an issue with the fact the advert features a Black family enjoying Christmas with one another. What is so wrong with that? And how are these people okay with making their racism so bare faced?

There are tonnes of Black families with young people within them across the country who may watch that advert and think, “wow, there’s someone who looks like me on there”. Yet, some people want rid of that happiness because of a superiority complex that only white people should be in Christmas adverts, or that only white people can celebrate Christmas.

Luckily, Sainsbury’s stuck by their decision. Responding to the wave of negative comments, they said: “At Sainsbury’s, we want to be the most inclusive retailer. That’s why, throughout all our advertising we aim to represent a modern Britain, which has a diverse range of communities. We have three stories of three different families in our advertising.”

We can only hope that the gammon faced opposition learns from this, or boycotts Sainsbury’s for so long that I never have to worry about seeing them during my weekly shop. Thanks for that x

Related stories recommended by this writer:

• Ranking all of the 2020 Christmas adverts on how likely they are to make you cry

• Ok, so who is singing in the new John Lewis Christmas advert?

• Ranking John Lewis Christmas adverts by their level of emotional blackmail