This report summarises the results of semiotic analysis and qualitative research conducted in Australia and the UK about Christmas. It focuses on the ritual of the commercial side of Christmas

1. ©2011 Susan Bell Research
Phone 02 9451 1234 Fax 02 9451 1122 Web www.sbresearch.com.au
Christmas in Australia

2. ©2014Susan Bell Research2

3. ©2014Susan Bell Research3
Which of these are not Christmas?

4. ©2014Susan Bell Research4
The challenge of researching Christmas
“Rituals are a type of symbolic expressive activity constructed of multiple
behaviours that occur in a fixed episodic sequence and then tend to be repeated
over time. Ritual behaviour so dramatically scripted and acted out and is
performed with formality, seriousness and inner intensity”
Dennis Rook. The ritual dimension of consumer behaviour
First, we need to appreciate that all
rituals are complex
Second, we need to understand
the reality of other people’s
Christmas
2
1

5. ©2014Susan Bell Research5
First, we needed to understand rituals
People can choose to accept, negotiate or
oppose cultural rituals
• The exchange of presents, ritual
• The ‘home grooming’ ritual,
• The ‘personal grooming ritual’
• and of course the formality of
the Christmas meal.
.
It’s not a ritual – its rituals
• Both a religious festival and a
commercial feast.
• In Australia, winter food and
winter symbolism celebrated in a
hot climate.
But its also full of contradictions

6. ©2014Susan Bell Research6
We used three different research techniques
Semiotics
Semiotic analysis of 2 decades of the
Christmas food edition of the Australian
Women’s Weekly and UK’s Good
Housekeeping
Online group
Exploratory three day online bulletin board
with UK and Australian consumers. 10
participants
Ethnography
Digital ethnography with 10 participants
Australian and UK over Christmas 2013

7. ©2014Susan Bell Research7
Residual and dominant Christmas themes in the
Australian Women’s Weekly
Residual Dominant

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Compare this with the UK …..
2010 2014

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Semiotic analysis of Australian Women’s
Weekly Christmas edition 1990 to 2013
• Focus is on excess and extremes: ‘perfect” “feast’ with “all the
trimmings”
• Clear association between the traditional hot roast and family
Christmas bonding.
• They give you a ‘cheat’s’ option, just in case you want to cheat.
• The AWW tells its readers that success comes from planning.
The AWW message is be traditional but do it your way, as
long as you have style.
Don’t be a slave, but don’t cheat either.

10. ©2014Susan Bell Research10
Online qualitative: how do we feel about
Christmas traditions?
We want to have rituals
• “I have to have the decorations,
the food….’
• “We always start the day with
scrambled eggs and smoked
salmon…”
• Its become a Christmas ritual that
we drive around on Christmas eve
and seen what everyone has done
this year
But we feel tension about
• “I get lots of email cards now and
feel strangely conflicted about it.
Christmas card writing is a pain,
but I love to have cards around the
house... “
• “The traditional Christmas pudding
is slowly disappearing in our
house. We've always used a recipe
that’s been passed on for around
150 years, but the younger ones
don’t like the flavour.”
What we mean by ‘traditional Christmas” seems to be
changing, as we (slowly) adapt it to new lifestyles.

11. ©2014Susan Bell Research11
Online qualitative. Christmas doesn’t just
happen: we make it happen.
It’s about fitting in with others
• “We didn't have a fixed time for
Christmas dinner, it was fitted
around according to who was
home or who had to go to work, it
ended up being early evening. We
had people drop by whilst we were
eating so there were more for
pudding. “
And being yourself
• “Last year was the first time we
hosted the Christmas family get-
together at our house. It was one of
the most enjoyable Christmases
since adulthood that I can
remember. It was Christmas on
our terms!...our kids could run
amok as it was their place and they
knew the rules. “
• “It's the one time of the year that
tacky is OK, don't you think?:) “
If the ritual is important, but consumers are changing its slowly,
and personalising it to fit… what is the ‘real’ Christmas?

12. ©2014Susan Bell Research12
It’s getting harder – and easier
“Turkey's available all
year. seafood feasts are
more common. you
have to work harder to
make it special, I think.”
“We keep our
Christmases low
key - there is too
much pressure to
have a ‘perfect’
day.”

13. ©2014Susan Bell Research13
The online qual
Told us
• That people were making Christmas magical in their own way.
• About the challenges faced by people who migrate to a country
with different Christmas traditions
• How to celebrate Christmas when you are away from home.
But did not tell us
• Whether other people’s Christmas was materially different from our
own
• What people actually do.
• How they created the magic.

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As researchers, we needed to get out of the
way
Allow participants to define
Christmas in their own way
Participants must not shape their
behaviour in response to the
researchers’ known or assumed interest
To allow participants to be self-
directed

15. ©2014Susan Bell Research15
• Residents of Australia, and UK
• Male and female
• Mixed ethnicity
• Age range:
• Several were migrants.
• Participants were originally
British, North American,
Australian and Indian and Irish
• We invited 14 people to take
photos of ‘what Christmas
means to them.’
• Original briefing:
August/September 2013.
• In all, 222 photos were
submitted.
• Most supplied descriptions of
the photos, which ranged from
stories to two-word labels.
These were supplied separately.
Digital ethnography
The method Maximum variability purposive sample
Photos were taken on smartphones and cameras, in the UK, Australia, New
Zealand

16. ©2014Susan Bell Research16
Initially 8 Dimensions:
• real-artificial;
• indoor-outdoor;
• personal-public;
• social-community;
• close-distant;
• empty-cluttered;
• ordered-disordered

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The start of the journey towards magic
Chance encounters with public symbols
representing Christmas, or of the
season

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Grooming the house
Families who were travelling away
from home photographed the
symbolism (such as an advent
calendar) that they had taken with
them to decorate the place where
they were staying, indicating that
some symbols become a vehicle or
repository for the meaning of
Christmas

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Preparing the home-connections

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Nostalgia: Connecting to Christmases past
The sense of connecting this
Christmas with Christmases
past was an important part of
the transition was evident the
closer it was to Christmas –
Christmas Eve and Christmas
Day:

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Maintaining connections (Past and present)

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Retail-connections

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Christmas Day itself
Magic Starts Now

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What we learned about the value of digital
ethnography
• Adopting digital ethnography, and giving our participants a wide brief
in how they interested our requests enabled us to capture people’s
private and public lives at Christmas.
• Many of our participants worked hard at their task, as indeed they
worked hard at creating Christmas.
• It showed us Christmas ‘as it really is’
• It took us inside people’s homes, without us intruding on a busy time
– even on Christmas Day.
• It gave us a broad geographically diverse and demographically
diverse sample.
• It allowed participants to define the agenda. Christmas was when
they said it was - and how.
• It was important to analyse the photos with and without the supplied
narrative

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Conclusion: How to engage with consumers
about Christmas?
• For a ritual as a complex as Christmas we needed multiple research
methods to get close to the heart of it.
• It’s not about whether to have a traditional Christmas, it is how to do
it. How much of the tradition to keep? What can we give away?
How do we make it Australian?
• We want Christmas to be traditional because there is no obvious
alternative – it would make us way too anxious to create anew
tradition from scratch, so we adapt.
• Being traditional means buying in (to some degree) to the concept
of ‘serious perfection ‘- the AWW seemed to give us a choice
between being a slave to creating darkly-rich European traditional
foods 9with more and more ingredients) or being sparkly and
stylish Australians .

26. ©2014Susan Bell Research26
Conclusion
• The online qualitative drew attention to the tensions that people feel
trying to achieve or avoid this perfection. Some consumers want to
retain these traditions, with each person working out how much to
relinquish and what to keep. We need to personalise the rituals, and
be ourselves. Let the kids run amok.
• The virtual ethnography took us into people’s homes, exposing the
everyday reality of Christmas – a much more light-hearted reality
than we had seen elsewhere, full of silly hats and family bonding.
• It clearly showed that people ‘transition’ towards Christmas. They
need a trigger and then they need to undergo certain rituals to get
themselves in the mood.

27. ©2011 Susan Bell Research
Phone 02 9451 1234 Fax 02 9451 1122 Web www.sbresearch.com.au
Thank you