A British Christmas in Canada: The Food Guide for 2026
Christmas is here at the shop. The shelves in Bayers Lake have gone purple, red and gold, the website has followed, and the first tubs have already left Halifax for people who are not taking any chances this year.
So here is the whole thing in one place. A British Christmas in Canada, morning to Boxing Day: the chocolate that gets eaten before breakfast, the dinner, the pudding that gets set on fire, the tub that gets argued over, and the bits you can buy at any Canadian supermarket without my help. All of it lives in our Christmas collection. Each section below is the short answer, with a longer article behind it where we have written one.
Kettle on. This will take a while.
What actually makes a British Christmas different from a Canadian one?
The food starts earlier and finishes later. That is most of it.
Every Canadian I know has already done a turkey in October. We have not. For us the bird is the whole point of the day, and the day is built around it like scaffolding. In my house dinner lands mid-afternoon, which is when most of my neighbours are still thinking about lunch. Everyone wears a paper hat, willingly or otherwise. Somebody reads a joke out of a cracker and the table groans in unison, which is the correct response. Then a pudding comes to the table on fire.
After that the day does not end. The tub comes out. Then the cheese. Then somebody falls asleep in a chair with the hat still on. Boxing Day is cold turkey in a sandwich with pickle, more tub, and a walk that everyone agrees to and nobody enjoys.
My impression of Boxing Day in Canada is that it mostly belongs to the shops. At home it belongs to the fridge.
The other difference is the small stuff. The box of chocolate opened before anyone has found their slippers. Bread sauce, which Canadians regard with suspicion until the second spoonful. Pigs in blankets (and yes, I know what Canadians picture when I say that). Mince pies with no meat in them, which takes more explaining than you would think. None of it is hard to get back once you know where to look, and most of this page is about where to look.
Christmas morning: the selection box and the stocking
A selection box is a flat cardboard box of chocolate bars, and in Britain it is opened before toast. Not after. Canada does not have this. Canadian children get plenty of chocolate at Christmas, but it does not come in its own box and it is not socially acceptable at eight in the morning. In a British house it is practically mandatory.
We have a full shelf of them this year, so pick the one you grew up with. The Cadbury Stocking Selection Box is the classic shape, the one that goes in the top of the stocking and comes out first. The Cadbury Medium Santa Selection Box and the Cadbury Small Selection Box are for the house with several children and a budget. The Galaxy Selection Box is for the one who prefers smooth to Dairy Milk, and will say so. The Maltesers & Friends Large Selection Box and the Maltesers Small Selection Box cover the Mars side of the family, the Nestlé Kids Selection Box and the Nestlé Adult Selection Box cover the KitKat side, and the M&M's Selection Box is for the teenager who claims to be too old for all this and is not. Every one of them is in the selection box collection.
Then the stocking, which has its own rules. The toe of a stocking is a Terry's shape and I will not be taking questions. We carry the Terry's Chocolate Orange Milk, the Terry's Chocolate Orange Dark, which is my own pick because it is the only one I can stop eating, the Terry's Chocolate Orange White, the Terry's Milk Chocolate Mint and the Terry's Milk Chocolate Caramel Ball for the person who thinks orange is too much commitment. The Terry's Chocolate Orange Bar is for a stocking with a flat toe.
For the rest of the stocking: the KitKat Orange Santa and the plain KitKat Santa, the Smarties Giant Reindeer Tube, Maltesers Mini Gingerbread Reindeers, the single Maltesers Reindeer, the Cadbury Christmas Puds that are chocolate and not pudding, and Bonds of London Candy Canes. Bonds make a candy cane that tastes of sweets. Most of the ones I have met over here taste of toothpaste. The whole stocking-sized shelf is in stocking stuffers.
Moo Free is here too. The clue is in the name. There is a Moo Free Selection Box, Choccy Coins, Festive Friends, Space Rocks and a Munch Mix. If there is a child at your table who normally watches everyone else open chocolate, that is their morning sorted.
The dinner: what you buy here and what you buy from us
Good news first. The expensive part of Christmas dinner is Canadian and always was. Turkey, potatoes, sprouts, parsnips, carrots, the sausages and bacon for the pigs in blankets: your butcher and supermarket have all of it. A Canadian turkey is a turkey. I have never once missed a British one. There is no reason on earth to import a vegetable.
What a Canadian supermarket cannot do is the brown stuff and the beige stuff around the edges, which is where a British dinner lives or dies.
Gravy. Bisto Turkey Gravy Granules are the one tub I would not let a British household go into December without. The Bisto Gravy Powder in the big drum is for people who make it the long way and enjoy the ritual, and the Bisto beef granules are there for the Boxing Day roast if you have the energy.
Stuffing. Paxo Sage & Onion in the box that makes twelve, the smaller Paxo that makes six for a quieter table, and Aunt Bessie's Sage & Onion Stuffing Mix if that is the side you were born on. Stuffing loyalties are inherited, like a football team, and about as negotiable.
Bread sauce. Colman's Bread Sauce Mix, the little packet. Nobody in Canada will make this for you, and once a year it matters more than anything else on the plate. Then Baxters Cranberry Sauce, which tastes of cranberries rather than of the tin it came out of, or Mrs Darlington's Cranberry Sauce with Port if the table is grown up enough.
Now the argument. Yorkshire puddings at Christmas: yes or no. I am a firm yes. A Yorkshire pudding is a gravy delivery system and it is Christmas, so. We carry Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire Pudding Mix and Green's Batter and Yorkshire Pudding Mix, and I will defend your right to use any of them against the purists in your own family.
The whole plate, what to swap, what to bring back in a suitcase and what to leave there, is in a British Christmas dinner in Canada.
The pudding
Christmas pudding is the one course that clears half the table. Half the room has waited all year for it. The other half is already pulling the trifle towards them.
Ours is Thursday Cottage, made in Devon the slow way, dark and heavy with fruit. The one-pound pudding feeds a table. The small one is honest about the fact that in many houses only one or two people actually want it, and it means those one or two people still get theirs. The boxed pudding is the one to give, because a Christmas pudding in a box is a present and a Christmas pudding in a basin is Tuesday.
Custard is not optional. Bird's Custard Powder in the tin is the one you make in a pan while someone hovers, and it is the one I would buy. Ambrosia Devon Custard is for the house that wants custard straight from the tin with no hovering at all. The Ambrosia Chocolate Custard exists for children, and for some adults who think I am not watching.
For the other half of the table, the half with no patience for dried fruit, we have Aunty's puddings in the little pots: Sticky Toffee, Golden Syrup, Chocolate Fudge, Strawberry and Spotted Dick, which Canadians cannot ask for without looking at their shoes. Golden Syrup is my pick. The McVitie's Lyle's Golden Syrup Sticky Pudding Cake is there for anyone who wants pudding without a kettle involved. Bird's Trifle in raspberry, or strawberry if you must, is for Boxing Day, when a trifle is the only acceptable dessert and everybody knows it.
The tubs, and the pouches for the post
At home the tub is furniture. It lives on the arm of the sofa from Christmas Eve to New Year and is the only object in the house everyone can find without looking.
All four are on the shelf and on the site: Quality Street, Cadbury Heroes, Cadbury Roses and Celebrations. If you are sending one across the country rather than carrying it home, each tub page lets you have it opened and nested, which is our way of packing them so the sweets travel in the tub and the tub travels in one piece.
If you want my order of preference: Heroes if there are children, Quality Street if there are grandparents, Celebrations if you want a quiet evening, and Roses if you are my age and set in your ways. The full case for each, and the fights it will start, is in the great British Christmas tub debate.
For a parcel, or a second helping once the tub is down to the coffee ones, there are the pouches: the Quality Street Pouch, the Roses Pouch, the Heroes Pouch and the Celebrations Pouch, plus the Quality Street Carton and the Celebrations Small Carton for a desk, a teacher or a neighbour. New alongside them this year is the Cadbury Dairy Milk Biscoff Chunk Pouch, which is the pouch I expect to go missing from my own house first.
And one that is not a tub at all. The Walker's Nonsuch Luxury Toffee Selection With Hammer comes with a small hammer, which tells you everything you need to know about the toffee. There is a Toffee Duo and a Toffee Twin, hammers included, for a smaller stocking.
Advent calendars: get them in the house before the first
The only rule of advent calendars is that they must exist on the first of December, which in Canada means thinking about them in October, which is why I am writing this in October.
The Cadbury Dairy Milk Advent Calendar is for a British child. The Cadbury Dairy Milk Biscoff Chunk Advent Calendar is for an adult who will tell you it is for a child.
Beyond those two: the Cadbury Heroes Advent Calendar for the house that cannot agree on one chocolate, the Terry's Chocolate Orange Advent Calendar for the Terry's person, who you already know, the Galaxy, Milky Way and Milkybar calendars for the younger doors, the Maltesers Merryteaser Reindeer Advent Calendar, the Reese's Advent Calendar for the house that has gone native, and the Moo Free White Chocolate Advent Calendar so that nobody is left counting down with a paper one. Nobody has ever complained that an advent chocolate was too small on the morning of the first. They start complaining about the twentieth.
Every one we carry, with my honest view on each, is in the British advent calendar guide, and the whole shelf is in the advent calendar collection.
Stir-up Sunday is 22 November: baking ahead
Stir-up Sunday is the last Sunday before Advent, which in 2026 is Sunday 22 November.
The name is not about the stirring, or not originally. It comes from the opening of the Anglican collect for that day in the Book of Common Prayer, "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people", which congregations heard, went home, and took as a hint. The custom grew up around it. Everyone in the house takes a turn with the spoon. You make a wish while you stir. Some families drop coins into the mixture for luck, and by tradition you stir from east to west, for the three wise men.
Shop-bought has been the normal British Christmas for a long time, and there is no shame in a Thursday Cottage pudding in a basin with your own brandy poured over it. But if you are baking, the hard part in Canada is not the oven. It is the shopping. Several things a British Christmas cake or a tray of mince pies takes for granted are simply not on a Canadian supermarket shelf, and baking a British Christmas in Canada goes through them one by one, with what we stock and what to use instead.
Gifts, and sending Christmas across Canada
We ship from Halifax to the whole country, and a good deal of what leaves the shop in December is a parcel for somebody who has not had a real Christmas tub in years.
What I would send. The tub they grew up with, opened and nested so it travels, because the argument is the gift. A Terry's Chocolate Orange Dark, still the best thing to find in the toe of a stocking. The Walker's Nonsuch toffee, because a present that comes with a hammer gets opened first. A jar or two from the Diddly Squat Farm range below. And, for the person who has everything, Beanies Mince Pie Flavour Instant Coffee, which exists, which I have drunk, and which tastes considerably more of mince pie than I was prepared for at seven in the morning. It has siblings this year: Christmas Pudding, Gingerbread and Salted Caramel, and a variety pack for the stocking.
Delivery questions are answered on our shipping page. If you are buying a lot of Christmas from us, which some of you are, GBS Rewards gives a little back on it.
What is new this year
The Diddly Squat Farm range is the big one, and I did not expect to be as pleased about jam as I am. If the name means something to you, you already know why. If it does not, it is a farm shop range from England and the labels will not explain themselves either. There is Strawberry Jam and Blackberry Jam, a Chilli Jam, a Piccalilli, a Real Ale Chutney, a Red Onion Marmalade, a Habanero Chilli Chutney for the brave, a Hot Seed Mustard for the ham, a bag of fudge, and two Dunkers biscuits, a British Shortbread and a Honey & Oat. The piccalilli with cold turkey on Boxing Day is the correct use and I will hear no other.
Cadbury has leaned fully into Biscoff. Alongside the chunk pouch and the advent calendar there is a Cadbury Biscoff Bauble and a three pack of the same, for a tree that gets lighter as December goes on, the Cadbury Dairy Milk Biscoff Bar for the everyday, the big one for the person who has stopped pretending, and, from the other side of the Alps, Toblerone Biscoff Truffles.
The Moo Free lot, the Bonds candy canes, the Smarties reindeer and the Beanies coffees round it out, and there is more in the Christmas collection than I can fit on one page without losing you.
Questions people ask us
When is Stir-up Sunday in 2026?
Sunday 22 November 2026, the last Sunday before Advent. Advent Sunday itself is the 29th.
Can I buy a Christmas pudding in Canada?
Yes. We have the Thursday Cottage Christmas Pudding in a one-pound size, a small size for one or two, and a boxed one for giving, and we ship them anywhere in Canada. The heating times are on the pack: steam or microwave, then warm the brandy before you light it.
What is a selection box?
A flat cardboard box holding several full-size chocolate bars, given to British children at Christmas and traditionally opened on Christmas morning before anything sensible has been eaten. Canada does not really have an equivalent, which is why your British partner goes quiet about it every December. We carry ten of them this year, from Cadbury, Galaxy, Maltesers, Nestlé, M&M's and Moo Free.
Can I send a tub of Quality Street or Heroes across Canada?
Yes. Each tub page has an opened and nested option, which is how we pack them for the post so the tub and the sweets both arrive as they should. The pouches and cartons travel well too.
Do you ship Christmas food across Canada?
Yes, from Halifax to every province. The details are on our shipping page, and the advent calendars in particular are worth ordering well before the first of December.
I will be the one in Bayers Lake restacking the Quality Street with the care of a man defusing something. Come and say hello.