Friday Five Favourite – Christmas Adverts 2025 – the runners up

12 12 2025

After last week’s top five, here are five more that were great but just didn’t quite make the cut!

Dog’s Trust

Marks & Spencers Food

ShelterBox

Smyths Toys

Morrisons





Friday Five Favourite – Christmas Adverts 2025

5 12 2025

It’s been a strong year, probably enough to do my runners up post in a week too! But also, a shout out to this Uber Eats advert, I’m not including it because I don’t think technically it’s a Christmas advert (it came out in September), but still worth a mention a) cos it’s excellent and b) because of its links to Christmas.

Waitrose
There’s been one advert that when it came out I sent to a load of people because of how good it was – and they were my winner by a long way last year too!

Aldi
After a decade, the Kevin the Carrot adverts don’t feel tired at all! This year’s came in three parts…

Google Pixel

Barbour
It would be hard for Wallace and Gromit to do a bad advert…

Tesco
They have a selection of adverts on a theme this year, so below should be the full playlist if I’ve done it correctly – but even if I haven’t, the opening video is a quick montage of them all!





Chasing the Dragon – by Jackie Pullinger

8 04 2025

Like many books of this genre (is “missionary testimony” a genre? If not it should be), this managed to inspire and discourage me all in one (but don’t worry, I gave it 5 stars on goodreads!).

Jackie Pullinger was a missionary in Hong Kong (and from what I can tell having googled, still is – in her 80s!), she moved there in 1966, and this book shares her experience of sharing Jesus, particularly with drug addicts and gang members in the old Walled City.

Her stories are amazing, and her methods so direct, with so many folk she would immediate explain who Jesus is, what He did for them, how they could know Him, and she would invite them to accept Him then and there, often this was quickly followed by them praying in tongues.

And this is what I mean by inspiring and discouraging simultaneously – inspiring is obvious, but discouraging because, my goodness, I’ve never seen anything of the like, nor know anyone who has! I fully believe it did and can happen, but her faith is something special! God has the power to do amazing things, but we just don’t have the faith to ask

A couple of my favourite bits:

“[Jesus] was the one perfect man who ever lived; He only did good, healed people and raised them from the dead, but His enemies put Him on a Cross and killed Him. He died for my sake but He did not wait till I was good before He died for me. He never said He would die for me only if I changed. While I ignored Him He laid down His life for me and even as He was dying He still said He forgave me.”

“Jesus doesn’t expect us to follow Him in our own strength, so if you are prepared to tell Him that you are sorry and ask forgiveness then He will forgive you. You can start again and He will give you the power to help you follow Him. The power is His Holy Spirit.”





Friday Five Favourite – Christmas Adverts 2024

6 12 2024

Waitrose
My winner this year by a LONG way, it was great – leaving us on a cliffhanger for a couple of weeks before releasing the second part!

The Entertainer
An excellent music choice for humorous effect

Boots
Classic anti-patriarchy teasing

M&S
Dawn French playing Dawn French

Aldi
They’ve been doing Kevin the Carrot ads for several years now, but this still has some excellent jokes in it, even after all this time





Friday Five Favourite: Christmas Adverts 2021 – The Runners Up

3 12 2021

After last week’s top five, here are the five that were great, but not quite great enough!

Macy’s – “Tiptoe and the Flying Machine”
Yes I know it’s not a UK advert, and that’s why it was relegated to the runners up list, but the reindeer being scared to fly was an adorable story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwIUIrk56cQ
Amazon – “Kindness, the Greatest Gift”
A lovely story of someone looking out for their neighbour, and I’m a sucker for anything with a bit of mental-health awareness, even if it *is* Amazon

M&S Food – “Percy Pig comes to life for the first time ever”
I’ll be honest, while this is about Percy Pig coming to life, which was entertaining, on my first watching I was mostly excited about Dawn French

Asda – “Make Christmas Spectacular”
Everywhere is an ice rink!

Morrisons – “Farmer Christmas”
With zoomorphic HGVs





Friday Five Favourite: Christmas Adverts 2021

26 11 2021

It’s that time of year!! With Advent Sunday this weekend, here are my top five adverts this Christmas season.
I’ve noticed that some companies take the YouTube videos back down after Christmas, leaving some of my old posts with dead links, and so this year I’ve tried to add a tiny description or comment for each one.

Celebrations – “The Lonely Bounty”
This feels more like an April Fool than a Christmas advert, but if true, is brilliant – and really made me laugh.

Aldi – “Ebanana Scrooge”
Two videos for this one, a teaser and then the full advert. Ever since the introduction of Kevin the Carrot, Aldi’s Christmas adverts have been so so strong, and the character of Ebanana Scrooge and his origin story this year is superb.

Lidl
Strong Back To The Future vibes from this one, I particularly loved that there was the future, and then even further in the future

Coca-Cola – “Chimney”
As someone who lives in a flat, I loved this way of making sure Father Christmas can still get into your home!

Tesco – “This Christmas, Nothing’s Stopping Us”
This just felt uplifting and optimistic after last year!





Friday Five Favourite: Christmas Adverts 2020 – the runners up

11 12 2020

Last week you got my top 5, here are the 5 that didn’t quite make it!

John Lewis
I think the only reason this didn’t make the top five is that I feel like someone else did a really similar idea in the last year or two
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Juv2c0xgGno

Lego

Tesco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CfrpexaCwg

Coca-Cola

Barbour
I like the message this gives against disposable culture!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OJF6zKppw8





Friday Five Favourite: Christmas Advert Runners-Up 2019

13 12 2019

Those that didn’t quite make my top five this year, but would be included if it was a top ten πŸ™‚

Walkers

McDonalds

BBC

Asda

Very





Friday Five Favourite: Christmas Adverts 2019

6 12 2019

As has become another tradition on here, here are my top five Christmas adverts in the UK this year – there’ll be a runners up list next week!

John Lewis

And of course, someone’s done a decent spoof as well!

Sainsburys

Aldi

Argos

Joules





Friday Five Favourite: Christmas Advert Runners Up 2018

7 12 2018

A selection of this year’s Christmas adverts that were good, that were maybe warm and fuzzy, but not strong enough to make the top five – in no particular order…

McDonalds

Intu

Vodafone

John Lewis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNbSgMEZ_Tw

Asda
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaIKutiqMlw

As an added bonus, this isn’t really a Christmas advert, but absolutely superb, possibly better than all of the above. Every year, when John Lewis release their Christmas advert, a man in the USA with the twitter handle @johnlewis is completely overwhelmed with responses (John Lewis’ actual twitter handles is @jlandpartners, used to be @johnlewisretail or something like that), so this year, Twitter worked with him to make this