Maltesers & Friends Large Selection Box - 207g

In Britain the selection box is less a present than a fixture. Every child gets one, usually from a grandparent, and it is opened long before anyone has a right to be eating chocolate. Maltesers, meanwhile, are the sweet that turns up in every cinema bag and on every long car journey, so a box of them with friends feels like two traditions at once.

People in Canada go looking for this because Christmas morning does not quite feel finished without it. Some want it for their own children, so the ritual carries on. Others just want the one they had, in the box they remember.

It is a 207g large box, flat and easy to wrap, and it keeps happily in a cool, dry cupboard until it is needed. It sits under the tree, goes in a stocking if the stocking is generous, or waits in the Boxing Day cupboard for the afternoon film.

It tends to travel with the rest of the British Christmas food: a tin for passing round after dinner, a few stocking fillers, something for the cheeseboard nobody has room for.