Sausage Troll: Greggs apologises for its Christmas campaign after Twitter backlash

High street bakery chain Greggs has apologised for an advert promoting its advent calendar, in which the baby Jesus is replaced with a sausage roll in a nativity scene. The campaign, launched on 13 November, met with backlash on social media, with people commenting that it was disrespectful and offensive. One Twitter user said “Do you think the people at Greggs understand that Jesus was Jewish and serving up a pork sausage roll in the manger is unbelievably inappropriate?”

The advent calendar is £24 and contains tokens that customers can exchange for products in-store, as well as a £5 gift card behind the last door. In advance of the launch Greggs said: “Novelty advent calendars have been around for years, so we thought it was time to take the concept up a notch.” However the half-baked marketing campaign appears to have come up short(crust). The chain quickly backtracked with a spokesperson stating: “We’re really sorry to have caused any offence, this was never our intention”.