One woman observed that Jesus was Jewish and that pork was not kosher.

“Out of interest do you think the people at Greggs understand that Jesus was Jewish and serving up a pork sausage roll in the manger is unbelievably inappropriate?” the woman identifying herself as Beth Rosenberg, wrote on Twitter.

Simon Richards, chief executive of The Freedom Association, a libertarian group, said the reimagining of the infant Jesus as a fatty snack was “sick” and “anti-Christian.”

“Please boycott @GreggsOfficial to protest against its sick anti-Christian Advent Calendar,” he wrote on Twitter. “What cowards these people are: we all know that they would never dare insult other religions!”

Daniel Webster, a spokesman for the Evangelical Alliance of Britain, lamented in an interview by telephone on Thursday that companies had long used Christian holidays to try to sell consumer items, from handbags to socks to beer. He said that he was not offended by the sausage roll, but that he believed that Jesus should be the focus of the Christmas season. The depiction of a holy and sacred man as processed meat, he added, was little more than “processed outrage to sell processed food.”

Greggs, which is based in Newcastle upon Tyne, has apologized. “We’re really sorry to have caused any offense, this was never our intention,” a spokesman said.