Crayola's 2025 Christmas Commercial Will Make Dog Lovers Cry 'Happy Tears'

Every devoted dog owner wants to include their canine kids in the Christmas fun. Some dress them up in cozy sweaters or silly costumes, whip up homemade dog treats, or share a few pet-safe scraps with them at dinner time. Others buy them new chew toys as gifts or just give them a few extra head scratches and belly rubs to remind them they're loved. Crayola tapped into this universal dog parent response in a recent 60-second commercial entitled "Blue Christmas."

In the ad, a young girl flips through a book moments before locking eyes with her blue heeler lying in front of her. Her eyes then drift to the decorations hanging from the windows. As if channeling her inner Grinch, she strips the house of every red and green decoration she can find; piles them on a blanket; and drags them across the room. She then grabs a storage bin filled with craft items and finds a spot at the living room table.

With her dog again by her side, she starts coloring and cutting with the help of her sibling and parents. Together, they all hang their creations around the house. Her grandmother enters the home moments later and immediately notices that all the decorations are blue. "Dogs can't see red and green," the girl says. "But they can see blue," her grandma responds. "Now you can see Christmas, too," the girl says to her dog. Many viewers on YouTube loved the commercial, with some crowning it "the best ad ever."

The commercial highlights one of the things to know about dog eyesight and dispels common misconceptions. So, what colors can dogs see? Not nearly as many as we can. A dog's world isn't just blue, black, and white, but the palette looks very different from ours. Canine eyes contain only two types of color-detecting cones, referred to as dichromatic vision. Humans have three. This means dogs can distinguish blues and yellows well, but shades of red and green don't pop the same way. Instead, those hues tend to blend into muted browns or grays in a dog's view.

This visual world resembles that of a human with red-green color blindness: colorful to a point, but with fewer vivid tones on the spectrum. Although the commercial focuses on blue as the replacement color for the red and green decorations, adding some yellow would have also been a great choice.

With that in mind, the next time you choose a new toy for your pup, go for a blue or yellow one to add a little more excitement to playtime. Of course, if your dog loves toys, it won't care about the color, but at least you'll know you picked something it can actually see well. Just like the girl in the Crayola commercial, choosing colors that stand out in your dog's world offers a small, thoughtful way to include them in the fun, whether it's holiday decor or a simple game of fetch on the living room floor.