Exploding truffle boxes, spinning stars and flying chocolate angel wings: Get the EXCLUSIVE first look at M&S's new Christmas food ad (and learn ALL the behind-the-scenes gossip...)

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Forget that sip of mulled wine, that first  bite of mince pie; we all know when the festive season TRULY begins: with the Christmas TV adverts.

And each year these glorious televisual extravaganzas become increasingly cinematic, increasingly heart-warming, and increasingly hotly anticipated.

This year M&S has stolen hearts with their wonderful story of Mrs Claus saving Christmas for six-year-old Jake using her trusty chopper, but we have some exciting news: M&S has FOUR MORE Christmas adverts to come! And we're giving you an EXCLUSIVE preview of the first one right here, right now, before it airs on telly tomorrow night. Hold onto your (elf) hats...

This year M&S has stolen hearts with their wonderful story of Mrs Claus saving Christmas for Jake, but there's good news: they have FOUR MORE Christmas adverts to come!

Each of M&S's four food adverts will be released every week from now, focusing on different areas of Christmas. The first one is about food gifting ideas, another will showcase gorgeous cakes, another M&S's brilliant party food, and the final one everything you need for the perfect Christmas dinner feast.

The food for gifting advert will premiere tomorrow night at 9.45pm across ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. But now's your chance to watch it RIGHT NOW.

Set to the classic M&S instrumental version of Clean Bandit’s 2014 hit Rather Be (this time with added Christmas jingle bells), the ad is 20 seconds of exhilarating golden festive sparkle and jollity. It simply oozes luxury and decadence. And chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate.

(Scroll down for a list of our favourite foodie gift ideas featured in the first M&S food ad - all of which are going on our Christmas wishlist this year...)

M&S's new Christmas food 'gifting' ad is the first in a series of four to be screened this year

A sumptuous waterfall of golden sparkles, the advert highlights food gifts available from Marks & Spencer’s Collection range, and features delicious, luxury treats such as their Oudinot Champagne Truffles in a golden glass keepsake jar; a single origin Chocolate Tree Centre Piece made of white, milk and dark chocolate stars; a Chocolate Golden Jewels Box; tea; and hand-finished White Chocolate Angel Wings.

The advert appropriately begins with the cheeky words ‘Tis the season for giving (or keeping)’…. Um, can we do both, please?

Shot over four days in M&S’s top secret production studio located just outside Paris (the exact location of which must remain hush-hush in case chocoholics turn up one year to loot the place….), the rapid-fire advert is a shiny, golden kaleidoscope of colourful chocolates, exploding jars of truffles, and spinning chocolate stars stacked on top of each other to build a Christmas tree.

Then there are brilliant hand-finished White Chocolate Angel Wings flying around a black backdrop, boxes of loose tea bursting out of their packaging into decorative piles, and gourmet chocolates whizzing through the air and back into their glorious golden box, which snaps shut in a puff of golden glitter and silver sparkle.

M&S's White Chocolate Angel Wings - hand finished with edible gold - feature prominently in their food for gifting TV advert

The M&S Collection chocolate box, which features in their first advert celebrating Christmas food

And although the film looks utterly magical, the special effects are all remarkably lo-fi…

‘We shot so much glitter you wouldn't believe - it was everywhere!' says Liza Freudmann, M&S Head of Food Brand and Marketing. ‘And trays of chocolates being bashed to bounce in the air. And truffles bursting out of glass jars that had been fitted with spring mechanisms.'

'But the trickiest thing about filming was probably keeping all that chocolate cold,' she explains. 'We shot the advert over the hottest days of the year in the summer in France, which meant lots of melting chocolate. We had to get our prop builder to craft models of the hand-finished White Chocolate Angel Wings (with in-built flapping mechanisms) so they didn’t melt, but everything else you see in the ad is the actual, edible product.

‘We also spent a long time deciding how quickly the angel wings should flap: too quick and they looked like moths, too slow and they looked like birds!’

And the biggest secret to the M&S Christmas ad special effects? String. And reverse filming.

‘Lots of the sequences are actually just the film shown backwards,’ reveals Liza. ‘The loose tea we laid out in little piles before sucking it up, and the stars were all stacked into a Christmas tree and then pulled off individually by invisible string! Though we did use a black gloved hand to place the top star on the tree using tweezers because we simply couldn’t make it look perfect using the string!’

The hand-picked Rwandan loose leaf tea with Safflower petals was filmed backwards to make it look as though it was flying

The M&S team took inspiration from Japan when it came to packaging this year

This year for the first time, M&S decided to include packaging in their advert, so to make sure it was all worthy of inclusion the team went on research trips all over the world to learn more about packaging trends.

‘When designing the Christmas range packaging we were really inspired by trends in Japan,’ says Grainne Allen, M&S' Head of Product Development. ‘Everything is very clean and minimal there, so instead of big fussy bows we’ve used simple ribbon bands.'

Delicious goodies from M&S's Christmas food range

The advert marks another first for M&S: ‘This is also the first time we’ve ever done a food gifting ad. But food culture is becoming huge in the UK, with more and more people gifting food and drink at Christmas than ever; it’s clear people don’t just want to buy “stuff”, they want to buy beautiful things to eat and share.

‘Our Christmas hamper orders are already doing better than last year, but increasingly people are putting together their own hampers by selecting beautiful things from M&S in-store or online themselves.

‘And we have a wonderful range of Christmas products available to put in hampers, from beautiful tins of Christmas Spiced Tea and boxes of Prosecco Mallows, to luxury advent calendars, Red Velvet Truffles, Gold Crème Brûlée Liqueur, and Strawberry & Champagne Conserve. We’ve got a bit of a Prosecco and Champagne theme going this year!’

Well, we aren't going to complain about THAT.

M&S are releasing four Christmas food adverts alongside their main Christmas advert

10 gorgeous gifts for the fabulous foodie in your life

1. The Collection Ultimate Platter (£30, 600g)

Win over even the grumpiest of Christmas grinches with this breathtaking golden box of chocolates from M&S, which includes scrumptious milk, dark and white chocolates, Marc de Champagne truffles and mendiants adorned with dried fruits and nuts. If life really is like a box of chocolates, we want ours to be exactly like this one.

The M&S Ultimate Chocolate Collection platter, so exciting you may be gifting it with one or two or three (or four) chocolates missing... oops

2. Oudinot Champagne Truffles (£12, 145g)

A stunning keepsake glass jar of 10 milk chocolate truffles with creamy chocolate and gooey Oudinot a Epernay Cuvee Brut Champagne centres. M&S is also doing a similar jar of Red Velvet Truffles (£10, £150) which we can promise you are most delicious (#research).

3. Chocolate Angel Wings (£10, 150g) 

Last seen soaring through the M&S Christmas advert, these beautiful white chocolate Angel Wings are the perfect gift for the white chocolate lover in your life. Just don't try to make these ones fly. It might end in tears.

M&S's Champagne truffles, left, and their White Chocolate Angel Wings, hand-finished with edible gold, right

4. The Collection Prosecco & Chocolates (£20)

Chocolate and bubbles: that classic Christmas combination. And always super welcome when you're on the receiving end of it. As well as this pairing, M&S also have a Champagne and Chocolates Gift Box (£45), which includes Oudinot Vintage Champagne presented in a gift box with a beautifully decorated chocolates. 

M&S's beautiful chocolate Tree Centre Piece, left, and their white chocolate Angel Wings, right

5. Chocolate Tree Centre Piece (£25 640g) 

Remember the spinning stars from the M&S Christmas food advert? Here they are in complete tree format! Pop one of these in the middle of your Christmas to make everyone smile on the big day.

6. The Golden Chocolate Jewels Box (£15, 200g) 

Featured in the M&S food ad (it's the box that snaps shut at the end), this beautiful selection of sophisticated hand finished chocolates filled with the finest gourmet flavours comes so beautifully packaged that you won't even need to wrap it.

M&S's new Golden Chocolate Jewels Box is full of sparkly treats 

7. Loose Leaf Rwandan Tea (£5, 150g)

Just in time for Christmas M&S has launched a beautiful tin full of aromatic loose leaf Rwandan tea, hand-picked loose leaf tea from the Cyohoha Tea Estate in Rwanda, 'the land of a thousand hills', with vibrant safflower petals. A smooth, medium strength black tea - Christmas morning cuppa?

8. Sparkling Prosecco & Peach Conserve (£, 227g)

Sparkly peachy conserve with a hint of bubbles? Yes, please, M&S! Made with juicy peaches, Prosecco and Marc de Champagne, this beautiful jar makes a terrific stocking filler - perfect on hot toasted buttered crumpets for a special Christmas breakfast.

For the perfect Christmas breakfast, try M&S Sparkling Prosecco & Peach Conserve on toasted crumpets with a cup of M&S Loose Leaf Rwandan Tea with Safflower Petals

9. Golden Holly Christmas Cake (£18, 1.4kg), Jewelled Poinsettia Christmas Cake (£25, 1.45kg)

M&S's Golden Holly Christmas Cake is a terrific option if you don't have time to spend months making your own, while their sumptuous Jewelled Poinsettia Cake is a really special choice: a deliciously luxurious fruit cake, matured for eight months and positively bursting with cognac and port soaked Vostizza currants and flame raisins.

The M&S's Golden Holly Christmas Cake, left, and M&S Jewelled Poinsettia Christmas Cake, right

10. Gold Creme Brulee Liqueur (£10, 35cl) 

Add a golden touch of sparkle to your Christmas with this delicious dessert-inspired liqueur. Perfect for drinking over ice around a roaring fire, or drizzling over vanilla ice cream.

11. Prosecco Mallows

Lighter than air and spiked with glorious fizz, these very grown up sweeties are the perfect squishy gift for the sophisticated foodie with the sweet tooth. 

M&S Handmade Prosecco Mallows, left, and M&S Gold Creme Brulee Liqueur, right, perfect in.... well... in everything