An alternative version of the popular ‘Monty the penguin’ advert by John Lewis has gone viral.
St Thomas’ church in Norwich filmed their own version of the Monty story, which involves a penguin searching for ‘real love’.
In the church production, a little boy dreams of real friendship with his toy tiger but his longing is only satisfied in the shadow of the cross.
Sorry, we couldn’t find this video.True meaning of Christmas
The video has already received over 20,000 views on YouTube and featured on the ITV news website.
Beej Harris, who produced the church’s video, said its inspiration came from the misplaced Christmas message in the John Lewis advert.
He said: “There was a lot of satisfaction in presents and toys, but we actually wanted to kind of take it back and say that Christmas is about so much more than that.
Christ above all things
“The presents and toys and all that stuff is great but actually the real meaning is about Christ”.
Describing the scene at the end, which depicts the little boy staring up at a cross, Harris says that the boy sees Jesus and realises He is “better than everything else”.
As the boy looks on, the message appears: “Give someone more than they’ve been dreaming of this Christmas”, followed by simply “Christ”.