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Shoppers are furious as items on Tesco's festive range have hit shelves with the word Christmas missing on several products.

Angry comments flooded social media as customers noticed the chain's 'Top Iced Fruit Cake' and 'Merry mince pies' did not have the word Christmas in their name this year.

One shopper complained: "Tesco are no longer celebrating Christmas!" Another said: "What a shame you can't celebrate a season that puts a huge profit through your tills."

A user countered that: "They're literally just called mince pies. When have the boxes ever said Christmas on them?"

Elsewhere, Tesco Christmas cards missed out the word Christmas from their name in-store, but were still called "Tesco Luxury Winter Town Christmas Cards" online.

One commenter said: "Private company, they can do what they like", but others insisted that the most popular supermarket in the UK should take more care in how it named its products.

Tesco does sell Christmas items elsewhere in their stores, but shoppers were upset by the renaming of food in their "festive range" to avoid using the word Christmas, with one dubbing the changes "corporate tiptoeing".

Shoppers first called out Tesco's confusing Christmas branding in November, when a Christmas-tree shaped cake was sold as a "Fruitcake". Some patrons called for a boycott of Tesco's, saying they would "refuse to support shops that won't support our traditions".

Another Facebook user waded in by saying it was "just companies trying to be woke", and that the change did not at all reflect the wishes of non-Christians in the UK.

Tesco have also come under fire for renaming their Christmas trees to "evergreen trees", a move Susan Hall, leader of the Conservatives in the London Assembly, called "Wretched ridiculous nonsense", and Olympic medalist Sharron Davies dubbed "a bit silly".

Tesco claim that this change was introduced "to make it clear which type of Christmas tree is inside the box and help customers to distinguish between the many Christmas trees in the range". In response to criticism, they also emphasise that they do openly celebrate Christmas and have since begun giving away Christmas trees in return for donations to local food banks.