How come he’s on the moon? That’s probably the first question you asked yourself upon seeing the new John Lewis advert this morning.

Well, maybe not the first – that was either “What sort of little girl owns such a powerful telescope?” or “How is he still alive without any oxygen? Shouldn’t his skull have exploded in a huge arc of bone and gore the second he took his helmet off, like that bit in Total Recall?” – but it’s likely to be the one that stuck with you.

The Guardian view on Christmas ads: they’re selling, and we’re buying | Editorial Read more

Clearly, the answer is that the old man is a monster. That’s the only logical explanation. Napoleon only got exiled to a Mediterranean island, for crying out loud, and he was Napoleon. But this guy has literally been jettisoned to the moon. He is hundreds of thousands of miles away from the nearest human. What could he possibly have done to warrant such punishment?

How many people must he have killed? How many lives must have been crushed into nothing under his vicious boot? Is he a war criminal? Is that it? Is he Hitler? Is this whole advert just a berserk wish-fulfilment fantasy about how the international community should have treated Hitler if they had caught him before he killed himself? If that’s the case – as I strongly suggest it is – the advert’s slogan probably should have been revised from “Show Someone They’re Loved This Christmas” to “Don’t Give Balloons To Moon Hitler, You Idiot”.

Even though this reading of the advert is absolutely spot-on, John Lewis could have saved any potential misunderstanding by just reining it in a bit. Because until now, even at their most avant-garde, the store’s Christmas adverts have always somehow managed to be about John Lewis.

There was the advert where a woman aged gracefully, surrounded by John Lewis products. You could reasonably infer that the little boy who couldn’t wait to give his parents their Christmas present bought it from John Lewis. The snowman who somehow gained sentience in a horrifying moment of God-defying witchery still physically ended up in a branch of John Lewis. If you visited John Lewis after watching the penguin advert last year, what could you buy? That’s right, a penguin.

There’s none of that this year. Does John Lewis sell telescopes powerful enough to scan the moon for individual human beings? No. Does John Lewis stock cuddly toys shaped like brokenhearted old men whose milky eyes are full of regret for the atrocities they have definitely committed? No. Not a single frame of this advert is even tangentially related to John Lewis.

Things desperately need to be brought back down to earth next year. Part of me hopes that the big 2016 John Lewis advert is just the guy from the Safestyle double glazing ads standing in a branch of John Lewis shouting “BUY YOUR MUM A KETTLE” over and over again. Because otherwise, at this rate, next year’s advert will be the story of an alcoholic carrot or a plasticine spaniel with abandonment issues or just a damp napkin with a frowny emoji drawn on it, and it’ll be three times longer than it needs to be, and it’ll cost the equivalent of Portugal’s GDP to make, and it’ll be soundtracked by a melancholy plinky-plonk cover of the Big Break theme tune, and we’ll have to go through this palaver all over again. I’m not sure I’ve got the patience for that.

At least the little girl bought him a telescope, though. She could have bought him food, or a companion, or a ticket back to Earth. But no, she bought a telescope, dooming him to spend the rest of his miserable life watching everyone else have much more fun than him. What a fist to the face. Take that, Moon Hitler.