It’s here! Adam&Eve’s John Lewis ad features an alien who experiences Christmas for the first time

The John Lewis Christmas advert: so eagerly anticipated all year long, it might as well be a national holiday in itself. It’s as much a part of British culture as cocktail sausages and David Attenborough, and the team at Adam&EveDDB helped it come to life this year once again.

The Unexpected Guest aims to celebrate little magical moments of Christmas being experienced for the first time. Like putting the star on top of the tree, or eating a mince pie. John Lewis & Partners claims that its customers are “more excited than ever” for Christmas this year, seeking some escapism as many of us were unable to celebrate with loved ones last year due to the pandemic.

The ad features Nathan, a little boy with a big heart, and the aptly named alien Skye, whose spaceship crash-lands in a forest behind Nathan’s house. Nathan brings Skye many Christmas delights, including the usual cheesy light-up Christmas jumper, and they decorate woodland trees together, play a snowball fight, and watch Christmas films. In a scene very similar to that old childhood extra terrestrial favourite, Skye fixes her ship and must depart Earth and Nathan, who’s sad to see her go.

“There is nothing more magical than discovering the joy of Christmas for the first time and enjoying your favourite festive moments with loved ones,” says Claire Pointon, director of customers at John Lewis. As families begin to reunite over the festive period this year, Pointon hopes the advert will remind us of “the joy of experiencing Christmas for the first time”. The annual ads are “iconic,” says Lola Young, a 20-year-old singer-songwriter from South London who covers Together in Electric Dreams for the ad, a reference to the sci-fi nature of the ad.

John Lewis isn’t stopping with the advert though. In their ten “Christmas Emporiums,” they’ll have Skye’s ship, and create and share an interactive gif on social media. There will also be two Snapchat lenses launched today: the first is a selfie lens which lets the user become a space-traveller, and the second is an outward facing lens, which lets the users play with Skye’s spaceship within their own world.

And a version of Nathan’s Christmas jumper will of course be available in stores and online in all sizes, through which John Lewis will donate ten per cent of the profits for each jumper sold to their Give a Little Love charities FareShare and Home-Start UK.

Great, now Electric Dreams is stuck in my head.