Foucault defines the concept of an archive as the laws that determine a ‘non-chaotic record of events’. (Blommaert) In the case of Christmas, the archive can be defined as a collection of concepts, events, emotions, traditions and ideas that would be accepted by general consensus to be ‘Christmassy’. While the archive may not represent the reality of Christmas, it represents the values that people associate with their idealised Christmas, which is naturally what advertisers are attempting to emulate. In defining the Christmas archive, we looked at primary evidence from our survey which demonstrated how values were ascribed to Christmas. We then looked to secondary evidence about the origins of Christmas to understand the historical foundations; drawing on Armstrong’s assertions that English Christmas traditions were adapted from Germany in the early 1800s, we examined Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘Christmas within Doors, in the North of Germany’ which describes customs of Christmas Eve in the town of Ratzeburg. These German traditions placed family and selflessness at the core of Christmas celebrations.
Hover over the different pictures to find out more about the key concepts which define the Christmas archive. Red text denotes modern and primary evidence, and green text denotes historical evidence.
Emotion
Questions about ‘warmth’ and ‘cold’ were placed to try and bring out the dominance of emotion in values surrounding Christmas: ‘warmth’ and ‘cold’ have the double significance of denoting both temperature and emotion. When asked for a general word association, people associate cold things like skiing and snow with Christmas. However, when asked to rank on a 1-5 scale (where 1 indicates no association with Christmas and 5 represents a high association with Christmas), they place ‘warmth’ (4.25) much higher than ‘cold’ (3.33) on average, suggesting that when thinking about Christmas, they place more significance on emotion (human factors) than weather (non-human factors).
Gift Giving
In Coleridge’s account of German Christmas traditions adapted to England, he described children presenting gifts to their parents, while hiding presents for each other in their pockets.
Gift giving has become a huge Christmas tradition, and is central to the celebration of Christmas. However, this does not imply that Christmas has become entirely a greed inducing, materialistic enterprise: when asked if they prefer to give and receive money or gifts, for the most part people prefer gifts - overwhelmingly this was justified with the comment "more personal", linking again with the idea of human togetherness.
"I love putting time and effort in developing elaborate schemes and gifts. Even if they aren't fiscally great, I definitely show my affection through showing you that I've been listening or put thought in my time that I spend with you into physical manifestations."
Religion and consumerism
According to Belk (2001, p.319), modern consumer materialism has instilled four of the seven deadly sins (avarice, gluttony, lust and envy) into the celebration of Christmas, which could suggest that Christmas has diverged from its traditional Christian origins. Christmas is undoubtedly more consumer-driven than religion based in the modern world - when asked to name the figure they associated most with Christmas, the overwhelming response was Santa Claus, with Jesus appearing in fewer than 10% of responses. However, consumer activities most valued in the survey - having a ‘tasty food abundance’ or ‘gifts’ - all centred around interaction with others, sharing and togetherness, suggesting that the religious morals of making others happy remain instilled in the Christmas archive today.
Childhood
Coleridge's account locates the child at the heart of Christmas as active agent inspiring strong emotions in adults. Making children happy motivated adults to provide their children with an elaborate Christmas, and following generations had the additional incentive of trying to reproduce the emotions of their own childhood Christmases out of nostalgia. (Amstrong, 2008, p491)
When asked to describe their fondest Christmas memory, respondents often described a childhood memory that could be a common memory to most people: a special gift they received from their parent/watching christmas movies with their family.
Togetherness
Overall, the archive is characterised by the positive experience of human togetherness (positively shared emotions and events), rather than materialistic, individual or negative factors (negative emotions or emotions that promote division, or singular events/material goods that are not shared between people). For example, people consider a ‘tasty food abundance’ that can be shared and enjoyed all together as much more related to Christmas than ‘glamorous clothing’ which is an individual experience which promotes competitiveness and negative emotions such as ‘jealousy’.
These core factors of ‘togetherness’ at Christmas - family, generosity, emotions and sharing - appear clearly in Coleridge’s account of German Christmas in England. For example, the gift giving is a deeply emotional experience - “the father stifled the tears that ran down his cheeks by clasping his children tight to his breast” (Amstrong, 2008, p 491).
Religion
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Christian religious foundations contributed to the values of selflessness and strong morals that are associated with Christmas. On Christmas day, Coleridge describes how the parents offer gifts to their children on the parlour table for all to see. Then, in private, the parents would tell their children what they considered “most praise-worthy and which was most faulty in their conduct.” (Amstrong, 2008, p 491) Thus, Coleridge’s account of Christmas customs in North Germany highlights how Christmas was used an opportunity encourage selflessness and discipline in Children, which at the time were considered as core normative features of a good Christian life.
Patriotism
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A particularly intriguing response to the survey was the high score of ‘National Tradition’ (3.7). When surveying, we asked respondents to identify with either British or American culture. There is a sense that both culture consider their Christmas traditions to be unique to their culture, despite how the majority are shared between them. National identity is thus a surprisingly integral value to Christmas - it reflects togetherness on a macro scale. It seems a consensus that Christmas is about welcoming and accepting others (one respondent commented that ‘Everyone’s Welcome’ is the slogan best reflecting Christmas “because that’s how it should be”). However, there has been an unbelievable backlash on social media as a response to ‘forced mutliculturalism’ in advertising this year. There is a sense that advertisers are attempting to find a balance between a more globally minded and pro-EU market in the millenials and a pro-’British’ market among the more conservative minded citizens of the UK within a turbulent, post-brexit economy.
Emotion
When ranked, ‘Glamorous clothing’ (2.35) scored more highly than ‘jewellery’ (1.44), but neither were particularly associated with Christmas. ‘Homemade’ ranked much higher (3.67). This again reflects the archive ideal of togetherness - ‘jewellery’ and ‘glamorous clothing’ are individual luxuries that promote negative emotions such as jealousy and competition. In contrast, ‘homemade’ suggests things made authentically and instilled with love, and indicates opportunities for people to come together and make (i.e. ‘baking with family’ was noted as a treasured Christmas memory of one respondent).