This holiday season has been full of commercials featuring people being mean to Santa. But Unicef Sweden’s commercial depicts the man in red as a meanie, instead: He’s a Santa for the 1 percent, announcing “I don’t do poor countries.” Will the North Pole be the next territory to be occupied?
(Screengrab, YouTube)
See the commercial after the jump.
The commercial shows Santa picking up a present that contains UNICEF medical supplies, such as malaria tablets, rehydration bags and polio vaccines. He then looks at a gift card that UNICEF sends to people when a donation is made in their name, and grumbles: “What am I supposed to say when I give this out? 'Here's a picture of the gift you never got?' Come on. I don't do poor countries.”
Maybe this is what happens to Santa after a whole month of being taunted by suburban housewives who get bigger TVs for their husbands than St. Nick does, as the Best Buy commercials depict.
The Week compiled a few reactions: Unicef’s “War on Santa” is unfair, says the Charleston, W.Va.’s Daily Mail; while Adweek calls it a clever way to remind people of poverty in a season of excess.
Past attempts to remind Americans of poverty during Christmas have been heavy-handed, too. Case in point: Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” a fundraising supergroup song that raised money for Ethiopia. The song is notoriously tone-deaf, saying that because there is no snow in Africa, its inhabitants do not know that it is Christmas. It prompted a satirical piece in Hayibo: “Yes, we know it’s Christmas,” say African musicians.
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