reacting to british christmas adverts

I spend most of the year trying to avoid commercials, then deliberately sit down to watch British Christmas adverts. As a Canadian living in the UK, I’ve made an exception for these. The 2025 batch gave me a favourite, a musical I wanted to skip and a reminder that a familiar character doesn’t mean the same thing to every viewer.

Waitrose won me over with a little romantic story. Asda’s singing Grinch had a much harder job because I don’t like musicals. Nobody asked me to rank the adverts, but I had opinions anyway.

Watch my 2025 Christmas advert reactions on YouTube.

A whole romance in under four minutes

The Waitrose advert follows Phil as he meets Keira Knightley and asks her out. He’s so flustered that he briefly gets his own name wrong. When he thinks he has competition, he loses confidence, but his mom encourages him to cook for her.

Food becomes his gift. Then he sees another man at her house and assumes the worst, only to discover that the man is her brother. That misunderstanding gets cleared up, and the story has its happy romantic ending.

I loved it. It was wholesome, cute and funny, with enough of a storyline that I compared it to a Hallmark movie squeezed into three minutes and 58 seconds. I’d initially complained about a four-minute advert, but this one earned the time for me.

Keira Knightley’s clothes distracted me too. I liked the scarves and the outfit with the tie, and wondered whether I could pull that look off. The short hair prompted a separate question, although I’d tried that before and it wasn’t a good look on me.

By the time the story finished, I was smiling and giving it an A+. It made the next few adverts harder to judge because I kept comparing them with Waitrose.

The Grinch didn’t need to sing

Asda chose a Grinch musical. I stopped almost immediately to admit that I don’t like musicals, so it was already working against my taste.

My idea of the Grinch is tied to the Jim Carrey film. That’s the version I think of, which made hearing this Grinch with a British accent odd to me. I wasn’t wondering about accents as a factual requirement for the character. It simply didn’t match the Grinch in my head.

I wanted the advert to be over and kept skipping ahead. A musical fan might have a different reaction, but I didn’t enjoy it. It was the clearest no for me in this batch.

Nostalgia only works when I have the connection

Sainsbury’s used the BFG again. I hadn’t grown up with that character, so I didn’t have the emotional attachment the advert might be counting on. I didn’t particularly like the way he spoke, either.

My verdict was that it was all right, without being especially memorable. I remembered Sainsbury’s using the BFG the previous year because I’d felt much the same then. Recognising a recurring character wasn’t enough to make me fond of him.

Wallace and Gromit in the Barbour advert worked better for me. Their presence made it pretty good immediately, even though I found the actual story forgettable. It was still enjoyable, and it wasn’t a musical. Thank God.

I’d looked at Barbour’s coats after the previous year’s advert and found them beautiful but pricey. This time the scarves caught my attention as the cheaper thing I might look at. Apparently Christmas advertising can send me window-shopping even when I’m busy judging its storyline.

Family drama had a place too

Tesco sat somewhere between wholesome and funny. Its Christmas included awkward family opinions, cards for people barely known, the struggle to get a family photo and sibling squabbling. I thought it was pretty good. The idea of an imperfect Christmas made sense to me because there’s always some drama.

Morrisons focused on the long work of growing and producing Christmas food. I understood what it was doing, but it landed in my wholesome, neutral category. Fine, rather than a favourite.

Waitrose stayed ahead. Famous people give an advert something to work with, but I also loved the story and the tone. A nervous man cooking a gift, a mistaken romantic rival and a happy ending did more for me than a singing Grinch.