M&M's Santa Shape - 100g

Chocolate figures are a fixture of British Christmas food. Santas, snowmen and the rest line up on the supermarket shelves every year, and the M&M's Santa is one of the faces people recognise from across the aisle.

People in Canada look for it because it is the one from home. Small things like this are what make the season feel right when the family is spread across an ocean, and nobody wants to explain to a seven-year-old why Santa looks different this year.

It is a 100g figure, a good size for the top of a stocking or a spot at each place on the table. Keep it somewhere cool and out of the sun, away from the radiator, and away from anyone who says they are only looking at it.

In Britain, M&M'S is better known for the bags of coloured sweets handed round at the cinema, and this Santa carries the same name into the stocking. It sits nicely next to a UK selection box and a tin for the sofa, which between them cover most of Boxing Day.