Erste Bank Christmas advert loses its magic with climate change taking the place of the holidays in its woke message — Watch
Michelle Topham 
Vienna-based Erste Bank seems to be intent on becoming as famous for its Christmas ads as the British company John Lewis, which has created one of the world’s most-famous, most magical and most-watched holiday season commercials for many years.
For the last three years, the Erste Bank Christmas ad has been released a month before the holiday, and each successive year the advert gets more and more attention.
So much so, the Erste Bank Christmas adverts over the last three years have earned the bank more than 200 million views.
Last year’s ad especially was very touching.
This year, however, the 2021 Erste Bank Christmas advert has lost its magic by deciding to embrace the ‘woke agenda’. Choosing to highlight climate change and recycling as its main topic, instead of celebrating the holiday.
In the advert, a father-to-be imagines his soon-to-be born daughter as she chastises him for wasting water, not recycling the milk cartoon and almost choosing a plastic bag when buying a gift at the Christmas market.
You know, all those things that say have a wonderful, magical Christmas. (Sorry, I’m British. I can’t help the sarcasm).
That Erste Bank has chosen to embrace the woke agenda, however, isn’t surprising as the current obsession with the environment is being crammed down our throats everywhere we look.
Companies especially are jumping on the band wagon as they seem to think, mistakenly, it will earn them clients.
Even as some of the things the woke are pushing — recycling of Tetra Packs which is too costly, too difficult for most countries and still environmentally questionable, fabric bags instead of plastic which turns out to be a very bad idea — are now looking to be not as great for the environment as many of them would have us believe.
So, sure, while the London-based Passion Pictures handled the animation for the 2021 Erste Bank Christmas advert beautifully (and I can always tell when an animator is British, as what they produce has a lovely ‘feel’ to it nobody else seems to be able to manage), the character designs are wonderful and I like the music, personally, I would rather have Christmas adverts actually be about Christmas and not about environmental issues that are still being debated by scientists on both sides of the spectrum.
Especially arriving at the end of a year that has been the most depressing I have experienced in my lifetime.
John Lewis, on the other hand? While I don’t think this year’s advert is their best, it is still sweet and at least they stuck with a lovely Christmas message.
Watch the 2021 Erste Bank Christmas advert below.
The bank itself is excellent (I’ve banked with them for more than five years and, overall, am extremely happy with their services), I just hope with next year’s Erste Bank Christmas advert they go back to what they have done before.
Made us look forward to Christmas
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