In contrasts to some of the more fanciful Christmas spots coming out of the U.K. this year, Nationwide Building Society keeps it real in its holiday campaign.

Agency VCCP has created a series of videos entitled the "12 Voices of Christmas," featuring real-life people telling authentic Christmas stories in a down-to-earth manner. Some are funny, some are sentimental and some are just charming: there's the guy who never calls his stepdad "Dad" except written on his Christmas gift tag; the group of Northern girls discussing the colors of their Christmas trees; the middle-aged lady who was horrified by Santa in a garden center in August; the barber singing "Silent Night," the priest discussing her first Christmas service and the family explaining how to fake your reaction to a bad present. 

Although it's a continuation of the financial brand's ongoing campaign featuring people's spoken word poetry, the Christmas ads somehow come across as even more endearing--and there's more than a hint of "Gogglebox" about the fly-on-the-wall approach of the conversational-style executions. As with the previous ads in the campaign, the subjects and themes have been chosen and the words written solely by the people involved in each spot.

Jim Thornton, VCCP's deputy executive creative director, comments: “You hear a lot of things at Christmas--sleigh bells, carols, Slade, over-excited children, police sirens--but the one thing you rarely ever hear are the voices of ordinary people talking about Christmas and what it means to them."

The spots break on Christmas Eve and will run for eight days on TV, airing at the start and end of ad breaks, so two voices will be heard each time.