Related Articles
The advertisement is intended to mark 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the country.
“Posten is an inclusive workplace with great diversity, and we would like to celebrate the 50th anniversary with this beautiful love story,” Monica Solberg, the company’s marketing director, told Kampanje, Norway’s advertising trade magazine.
The advert has had an overwhelmingly positive reaction.
The Norwegian inspirational speaker Jimmy Westerheim lauded Posten for “the most important advert in decades”, in a post on the group’s Facebook page. “Santa can love anyone he wants. Thanks to Posten for doing what many others should have done a long time ago!”
The gay news site Pink News praised the advert as “beautiful, emotional”. One reader wrote on the site’s Facebook page that the advert had “made me cry”, with its portrayal of love between older men. He called on Royal Mail to up its game.
Others commentators accused Posten of politicising Christmas, with one complaining in the comments under the group’s YouTube video that the advert was “woke gone crazy”.
The doctor and broadcaster Renee Hoenderkamp complained that she didn’t want her three-year-old seeing Santa kiss anyone, male or female.
The actor and activist Lawrence Fox, offered his “thoughts and prayers” to Mrs. Claus at her very public betrayal but Solberg denied that there was anything political about the advertisement.
“The right to love whoever you want is a fundamental human right, and is not considered a political issue in free and democratic societies in 2021,” she told Kampanje.
The advert is not Posten’s first foray into Christmas controversy. Its 2019 Christmas advert hinted cheekily that a handsome postman might be the real explanation for the virgin birth, while in 2020, it portrayed Santa as an irate, unemployed man with a more than passing similarity to the then outgoing US President Donald Trump.
Source link
