The Life Cycle of a Tin of Christmas Chocolates

In our latest blog post, we are looking at the familiar stages in the life cycle of a Christmas chocolate tin!

Christmas Chocolate Tin Header

Chocolate is just a big part of Christmas sweet gifts, fact. Whether you favour Heroes or Celebrations, Roses or Quality Street, there’s no denying that every tin and personalised sweet box of Christmas chocolates goes through a pretty similar life cycle and it’s something we can all relate too.

We’re going to be walking you through the oh-so-familiar journey every tin of festive chocolates will go through during the Christmas period and we’re pretty confident in saying we haven’t missed a step.

Can We Even Eat These Yet?

The supermarkets start celebrating Christmas in September, so it can be difficult to know when it’s actually socially acceptable to even start eating festive treats but the confusion really begins when these Christmas sweets start appearing in the kitchen cupboards and the age old question of ‘can I eat these yet?’ starts.

Every child has experienced the frustration of not being able to crack open the Christmas chocolates because their parents have said no but as an adult, it takes pure willpower to resist breaking open the Heroes until an acceptable time.

The Over-Excited First Opening (and compulsory sniff of the tin)

So, you’ve decided it’s time. Is it the 1st December? Is it Christmas Eve? Or is it the middle of October? Who knows and who cares, when the decision has been made to break that first tin of the year open, it’s a moment like no other.

With the anticipation reaching fever-pitch, trying to break into that tin seems more difficult than ever before but once the lid has been removed (and subsequently lobbed across the room because you won't be needing that anytime soon) the next step just seems to happen involuntarily and that is the compulsory sniff of the inside of the tin.

You just have to take in that overwhelming festive smell that is quite frankly, mouth-watering.

The First Selection

It’s at this point in the process that everyone calms down, takes a step back and really thinks about their next move because after all, you’ve literally got the pick of the bunch right now and you need to choose your first chocolate carefully.

There are a few obvious choices such as grabbing a purple one from the Quality Street first and of course, if you’re breaking open the Celebrations, you’re going to snatch a Malteser before they all disappear. Heroes and Roses though? There really is no star of the show, so this can be a tougher decision.

Those Golden First Days

The first couple of days that follow the grand opening of the tin are quite simply blissful. You know that behind that closed lid is a full selection of all your favourites and that you’ve still got access to all the best, making choosing a chocolate tricky but seriously exciting.

The Selection is Dwindling

We’re two or three days in at this point and things are starting to look a little worse for wear. We’ve not reached complete disappointment but the best in the tin are long gone by this point and we’re starting to look a little sparse.

There’s a lot of rummaging to see if you can, by any small miracle, find a rogue favourite in the bottom but we’ve generally all started to accept that we’re on to second-tier chocolates at this point.

No One Likes What’s Left but We Haven’t Given in Yet

We’ve reached the stage where we know that all the good ones and even the average ones are gone. We’ve even eaten the Dairy Milk Caramel from the Heroes, Quality Street’s golden pennies and we’ve cleared all of the Snickers from the Celebrations but for some reason, we’re still opening the tin with some kind of half-hearted hope that we’ll find a gem hiding in there somewhere.

It’s at this stage that we’re also having to pre-warn guests who head for the tin that they’re going to be disappointed, you know, the old ‘oh yeah help yourself but there’s not a lot left’.

We Literally Just Don’t Want What’s Left

The Heroes tin is a mixture of Fudge and Eclairs, there’s only Bounty left in the Celebrations and there are a few rogue orange creams and coconut eclairs roaming around in the bottom of the Quality Street tin and we’ve given up, we just don’t want what’s left but what do we do with them?

Do we give in and just chuck them away? Do we try and find those rare members of the family that actually like these random chocolates? Or to be honest, in the midst of a desperate moment of chocolate craving, we’re actually considering eating them (we’re not going to, just considering it).

You probably never thought there was such a routine to enjoying a tin of Christmas chocolates but we bet you’ve been nodding along to all of these stages whilst reading this blog!

As much as we love a tin of festive chocolates, we’re a big fan of a sweet treat and can’t resist our selection of retro sweet Christmas gifts at this time of year, so if you’ve got a taste for old-school sweets, check out the range today! 

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