The Boycotting Hysteria at Christmas Time

Christmas.

A time filled with love, joy and happiness. A time to enjoy the company of our families and friends we haven’t seen all year, a time off work to relax and recuperate. Our homes become engulfed in porcelain Santa’s and reindeers, Christmas trees littered with fairy lights and baubles; this season is the peak of our happiness. We sit in anticipation for the John Lewis advert to finally air, knowing Christmas can only begin once they tug at out heartstrings and make us feel all warm inside. Supermarkets follow in their footsteps, giving us more reason to sob at our tv’s and look at each other with glassy eyes.

So why, during a time of love and happiness, are people boycotting supermarkets for their Christmas adverts designed to pull at our heartstrings?

The recent store under fire for their 2021 Christmas advert is Tesco, because god forbid an advert mention covid and *gasp* the vaccine. The store showed a frame of Santa holding up a Covid passport proving he has been double vaccinated — in what was supposed to be a light-hearted moment for many to share a giggle at turned into Twitter uproar. Antivaxxers tweeted the #BoycottTesco hashtag, sharing their opinions of the advert and how its ‘offensive’, ‘wrong’, ‘disgusting’ — in my opinion similarly to thousands more this response was pure stupidity and pathetic.

Its offensive to treat covid as if it never happened, to treat the hundreds of thousands who died as if they meant nothing. I see no issue in a supermarket, who baring in mind stepped up throughout the pandemic and did more than their part time pay rate asked of them, making a light-hearted joke about covid. If we didn’t laugh about it, I think we would all just plunge into depression — some of us already have.

Its frowned upon to mention if we’ve had the vaccine, ridiculed and tormented that we are ‘government sheep’ and filled with tracking devises or aborted embryos. Ridiculed for giving ourselves autism (which is an ableist response to the vaccine — not only does it not cause autism but what’s the taboo surrounding it anyway) or shortening our life span from the risk of blood clots — which in retrospect is actually again a stupid response from the antivaxxers considering taking paracetamol or simply just living has a higher blood clot risk.

Tesco have done — as per usual with the antivaxxers outrage — nothing wrong. Its just another example of antivaxxers finding something to be pressed about.

I actually quite enjoyed the advert — so with that in mind, does this mean I can do my Christmas shopping without worrying if I’m surrounded by antivaxxers?

Result!