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This holiday, give your family the one gift that will truly bring them all together: a falsified death certificate.
A holiday-themed commercial for the German supermarket EDEKA takes viewers into some dark territory to forcibly remind its audience to put family, and groceries, first for Christmas.
The ad begins showing an old man alone in his home with sad piano music playing. As he puts up Christmas decorations, a voicemail message plays from one of his children telling him bluntly that they won’t be visiting him this Christmas.
A montage then shows the old man eating alone over a series of holiday dinners, as the ad begins to look like a suicide prevention PSA.
We then cut to the man’s children in their important jobs around the world as each receives a letter or an e-mail telling them that their father has passed on. Not quite that directly, mind you: this is high art. But the message is definitely received loud and clear.
We then see the children gathering at the old man’s house dressed all in black. They turn the corner to the dining room, and what do they see …
Here comes the punchline.
What comes next? Does the old man berate his terrible children for only caring about him when they thought he was dead? Do the children lay into their awful father for putting them through unnecessary mourning? Does the young granddaughter draw the incorrect conclusion that death is just something people can get better from and turn into a psychopath?
No, this is a Christmas commercial. It has to have a happy ending.
Oh, grandpa. Thanks so much for putting us through one of the most trying emotional periods of our lives so we could have dinner together. Everything is fantastic!
The general consensus on social media seems to be that this parable of forged documents is heart-warming, with an important message (other than “shop at EDEKA”).
Others took the more cynical, but more realistic, view.
While it does sound like a great prank, it’s typically bad form to engage in hijinx that will result in years of therapy bills.