So, we have Monty, the cute, love-lorn penguin, who turns out to be a much loved and rather tatty toy.

Then we have the sparkly fairies flying around changing dull gifts in shiny ones.

And it seems that's all fine and lovely.

Then we get one that is based on the story of the Christmas Day truce, featuring one very subtly placed product, which is being sold to support the Royal British Legion group of charities in the UK to mark a twenty year partnership between one supermarket and these charities.

It is, in my opinion a beautifully made video short, with a poignant story that has at least some basis in fact (an accompanying video discusses aspects of historicity/historical accuracy).  But it is dividing opinion - some love it, others say it is exploitative, commercialising the cententary of WW1, with still more questioning its historicity. 

It's a story I've known since childhood, so surely cannot be new to that many people.  It's a story no more and no less implausible than the one we tell each other in churches on Christmas Day.  It's a story that challenges nationalism, consumerism and individualism (at least in my view) and reminds us of a shared humanity that transcends labels.

The music in the background is, so I discovered, a very old gospel hymn 'Leaning on Everlasting Arms'.

Come Christmas, we will all (rightly) 'coo' and 'ah' at Sunday School and day school/nursery nativity plays that owe little to any possible historicity... and no-one will get uppity over theological niceties.

Frankly, if the Sainsbury's advert sells a whole stack of chocolate bars for charity, and boosts their profits, well good for them... and if cute penguins or sparkly fairies work for other outlets, so be it.  I'm just not convinced there is any moral high ground for Christians to be taking as we glitter up our stables, polish our tinsel halos and arrange for three men on camels to arrive at a house with a grumpy, ahistorical innkeeper, to say nothing of our own consumerism, gluttony and waste over the festive season...

You are, of course, free to disagree...