Note 77: British Christmas Ads, 2025 Edition

Keeping with my annual tradition of reviewing the Christmas ads from across the pond, and picking my favorites, here is the 2025 edition.

We have quite a few to cover, so let's get to it.

#10: Kevin Gets Married (Aldi)

Kevin the Carrot has been a fixture on these lists, and Aldi did not disappoint with the further adventures of the orange fellow.

Cauli Dog FTW.

#9: A Critter Carol (Apple)

This stands on its own, even when it's not hawking iPhones. I love the craftsmanship and work that went into this one.

#8 Little Drummer Boy (Etsy)

This is probably my favorite take on neurodivergence I've seen recently.

#7: Pixel, Actually (Google)

As an unrepentant fan of Love Actually, I enjoyed this homage over two decades later.

#6: A Year in the Making (Morrisons)

I appreciate the reminder that there's a lot of work done by a lot of folks throughout the year to make holiday traditions possible.

#5: Wallace & Grommit: Gift-o-Matic (Barbour)

I always look forward to these shorts and enjoyed the gags in this one.

Now we're down to the Final Four...

#4: An Uber Holiday Story (Uber)

I'm not a big fan of Uber the company, but they turned in a solid holiday family story of a single father and his daughter in two and a half minutes.

#3: The Perfect Gift (Waitrose & Partners)

The British holiday romance is a genre unto itself, and this small film - clocking in under 4 minutes - is a solid addition to that tradition.

#2: Where Love Lives (John Lewis)

John Lewis is a perennial contender in the holiday ad competition, and this year's entry doesn't disappoint, capturing the unspoken challenges and awkwardness that can arise between a son and a father.

Special Prize: Christmas Appeal 2025 (Shelter)

This one starts out fun and ends up as a gut punch, reminding us that it's not all feasts and presents and traditions over the holidays.

Here's a link to donate to Shelter in the UK, and The Night Ministry is doing good work here in Chicago.

2025 Champion: The Snowman (IRN-BRU)

Before we get to the winner itself, it's worth unpacking a few things that make this one of my all-time favorite holiday ads.

Folks in my Xennial generation grew up during a pretty disruptive media environment, as the world moved from broadcast to satellite to cable before emerging into our modern on-demand media environment. As programmers sought out content to run on all the new satellite and cable channels, they reached out overseas for content. This is stuff that we may have seen once, and it left an indelible impression on our psyche and memories.

For me, one of those programs was the 1978 (non-holiday) film The Water Babies, which blew my young mind mixing live action and animation.

It took me well over 30 years to track this film down to scratch the mental itch that it left.

Similarly on PBS stations around the United States in the 1980s, American kids watched the BBC Channel 4 animated adaptation of The Snowman, a children's book by Raymond Briggs.

The centerpiece of the film is the song Walking in the Air (starting at 15:0o in the video above), which became an instant holiday classic that has been covered and reintepreted many times over, from faithful renditions in holiday concerts...

... to Tangerine Dream using it as the closing sequence for Michael Mann's early weird war/vampire film "The Keep" (adapted from the F. Paul Wilson book).

Fast forward to late 2025 and I'm working on my annual review of British holiday ads, and I see one of my favorite UK products on the list for the first time: IRN-BRU, the most popular soft drink in Scotland.

I was introduced to the concoction by my friend David Donald, a political scientist and economist who taught at Glasgow Caledonian University and was an an early mentor and collaborator in my career. When my wife and I honeymooned in Scotland, we stayed with David and his wife Christine outside of Glasgow after we had worn ourselves out roadtripping as far north as Inverness (with a trip to Aberdeen, Ben Nevis and night in a lodge on the shore of Loch Ness).

David introduced me to IRN-BRU on one of our trips into Glasgow. The closest comparison that we have in America is Appalachia's Mountain Dew - not so much in taste, but in attitude and character. David passed on after a battle with cancer in 2017, and it's become a tradition for me to enjoy the orange-colored drink each time I visit Britain in memory of our Glaswegian visits.

So, when I was scouring the 2025 list of ads and saw that IRN-BRU had dropped an homage to The Snowman, this humorous ad unlocked a number of core memories that I've enjoyed revisiting this holiday season, from catching The Snowman on television as a kid long ago, discovering that it bookends one of my favorite films, to reminding me of my old friend.

The first ad would be a worthy sequel to the original cartoon, but the cheeky bastards also dropped a worthy sequel to their sequel.

I can't say that I've had as much fun with soft drink commercials as these*, which is why they are my 2025 selections for the best British holiday ads** this season.

I hope you've enjoyed these as much as I have and have a merry holiday season.

* Dr. Pepper's "Li'l Sweet" commercials are the closest competition in this category.
** Note that The Tank Museum in Dorset has yet to drop their holiday video, which was three hours of awesome tank stuff last year.