A new holiday season ad from PayPal aired across the UK during “The X Factor,” peak family-viewing time. Its premise is simple: two brothers wait to sneak glances at their Christmas presents as their parents bring them in the house. The ad has drawn hundreds of complaints to the national ad watchdog because it ignores the existence of Santa Claus. No, really.

The older brother explains, in the world-weary and infititely knowledgeable way of big brothers everywhere, that no packages coming into the house and their parents not going out on shopping trips means that they will obviously not be receiving any Christmas presents at all.

In a statement to the Guardian, a spokeswoman for PayPal defends the ad, explaining that it never says that there is no Santa, or “Father Christmas” as he’s called there. Even if so, the ad certainly implies that by making the children sad that they won’t be receiving any gifts at all because their parents didn’t buy them any.

We just want to take a moment to say we’re sorry that some people have been upset by our new UK Christmas TV advert. Our ad aims to take a fun look at those Christmas presents kids know come from their parents, and not in any way say Father Christmas doesn’t also deliver presents to them.

However, PayPal has now agreed to only show this particular ad after 9 PM, since children young enough to believe in Santa aren’t old enough to stay up late or use use PayPal.

PayPal Christmas ad gets hundreds of complaints it implies Santa isn’t real [The Guardian]

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