- December 18th 2025
- SEO News
A Short History of Festive Marketing
Everyone is a sucker for festive marketing. Even the most grinchy types have a weak spot. We know because when we call them Grinches, they know what we mean (thanks Dr Seuss). So it’s all seeping in somewhere! The thing with storytelling is that it’s culturally ingrained. It goes way, way back in history, to the very beginnings of civilization. We didn’t get to Kevin the Carrot by starting with Dickens or Coke, or even St Nicholas.
The Romans
The first time marketing and Christmas came together it was selling Christmas to the people and it started with the Romans (doesn’t everything!)
Saturnalia celebrated the God of agriculture and time and it happened between 17-23 December, although in 45 BCE Julius Caesar decided that 25th December was the shortest day, so 25 has been floating around as a ‘thing’ for a while even before the Christian festival.
Anyway, you’ll recognise the festive traditions of the time … gift giving, cross-dressing, home decorations of candles and greenery, and upside-down games where a child or servant in the household would be arranged to find a bean in their cake and they’d become the Lord of Misrule, taking charge for the day with his Queen of the Pea (maybe not that last one)!
Anglo-Saxon Britain
By the time we get to Anglo-Saxon England, we have a combination of Roman and Norse influence. The Yule of the Middle Ages was all about celebrating the harvest with decorations of evergreen, Wassail to celebrate the harvest (the ancestor of carol singing). We had the sharing of stories, social gatherings, and mumming (which has echoes in panto or even Charades!) There was gift giving and sharing of plenty after the harvest and slaughter of animals who couldn’t be kept through the winter.
Basically, the point is that whoever was in charge of Britain throughout history could see how important it was for the people to have a Winter festival. That’s why Christmas itself has been rebranded and repackaged from Saturnalia to Invictus to Winter Solstice to Yule to Christmas and all the other festival days in between.
Christmas as we know it
Only Oliver Cromwell’s government tried to ban it, and things didn’t end so well for them – out of a thousands of years of tradition, only 13 years of officially no Christmas. We can’t say whether it was this which ultimately made the country restore the monarchy in 1660, but I’d think it’s pretty likely don’t you?
Then we eventually get to Queen Victoria, and Irving and Dickens and Naste and the cementing of Father Christmas as a seasonal figurehead. He was a bit of a grinch himself at the start – take this 1821 poem from the early days…
Old Santeclaus with much delight
Old Santeclaus with much delight
His reindeer drives this frosty night,
O’r chimney tops, and tracts of snow,
To bring his yearly gifts to you.
The steady friend of virtuous youth,
The friend of duty, and of truth,
Each Christmas eve he joys to come
Where peace and love have made their home.
Through many houses he has been,
And various beds and stockings seen;
Some, white as snow, and neatly mended,
Others, that seemed for pigs intended.
To some I gave a pretty doll,
To some a peg-top, or a ball;
No crackers, cannons, squibs, or rockets,
To blow their eyes up, or their pockets.
Where e’re I found good girls or boys,
That hated quarrels, strife and noise,
I left an apple, or a tart,
Or wooden gun, or painted cart;
No drums to stun their Mother’s ear,
Nor swords to make their sisters fear;
But pretty books to store their mind
With knowledge of each various kind.
But where I found the children naughty,
In manners crude, in temper haughty,
Thankless to parents, liars, swearers,
Boxers, or cheats, or base tale-bearers,
I left a long, black, birchen rod,
Such as the dread command of God
Directs a Parent’s hand to use
When virtue’s path his sons refuse.
The ideal Christmas
So when did festive marketing become more about the stuff and less about the festival? It really started along with things like steam power, trains, and improved communication. And.. well it came down to stories! Stories have always been shared as part of winter festivals; the tipping point is that they were mass produced.
First Dickens and Irving managed to accidentally create mass desire and aspiration – it wasn’t intentional, they just spun a good yarn. But it went viral and built the foundation for commercial opportunity.
1819 – Washington Irving published The Sketch Book which included a story called Christmas at Bracebridge Hall. Then an illustrated version (post A Christmas Carol) was published in 1876 and we know how good pictures are at drumming an idea home.
1843 – Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is published. But Dickens had already been describing domestic festive traditions in 1837 with The Pickwick Papers. He didn’t invent it, he just described it so beautifully that it captured the public imagination.
The marketing of things
If there’s one thing people are good at taking advantage of, it’s opportunity. So, when really good stories about Christmas cheer meet with commercial nouse we get consumerism: things like Victorian Christmas cards (which were pretty weird by modern standards), advertisements for Christmas crackers and in 1880 the very first department store festive window displays and Santa’s grottos. It was all about displaying the wares. No one had to get too complicated!
Endorsement
Move into the 1930s and we get into endorsement territory. Basically, the character of Father Christmas or Santa was used to sell EVERYTHING from vacuum cleaners to cigarettes. Legend has it that Father Christmas only smoked for a few years and he worked really hard to quit, and he’s never been a fan of Coke, he prefers Irn Bru.
Festive jingles
When TV was invented marketers could get way more sophisticated by getting in people’s heads. For a whole generation, 1989’s Toys ‘R’ Us jingle was synonymous with Christmas. Incidentally, the other catalogue based giant Argos was trying the same thing with ‘it’s so easy’ but that was less sticky. It was all about creating ear worms with the tune and throwing all the toys in front of audiences. And if you were a kid at that time, it worked. Then in 1995 Coca Cola nailed it with ‘holidays are coming’!
Stories
In the 2000’s the ultimate marketing stories era begins. Advertisers had been using stories for ages. The Nescafe Couple, yellow pages “ologies” and fly fishing by JR Hartley, not to mention their mistletoe Christmas ad. It was only a matter of time before advertising products and festive storytelling really took off with John Lewis landing their 2010 effort with a multitude of micro-stories of people hiding and wrapping their weirdly shapes pressies. Everyone cried, especially when that little boy took a stocking to their dog outside in the snow. Then the floodgates opened and every brand followed suit with the stories which keep on coming every year.
So it looks like stories are here to stay at the core of festive advertising. They work because they stop us all feeling alone. And because some of us seem to like crying. There are a few key elements to the perfect festive advertising story:
1. Nostalgia Deployment
Remind people of childhood Christmases and show them their past. Basic nostalgic storytelling (Santa, magic trains, snow) has shifted to a more complex nostalgic storytelling. Parents of teens are ideal targets – John Lewis knows it with their late Gen X / early Millennial targeting for 2025.
2. Anthropomorphic Appeal
Give human emotions to animals, objects, or vegetables. Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot is an iconic example. Kids love it, and parents secretly do too.
3. Musical Manipulation
Songs in the minor key will always pull at heartstrings, with extra points if the cover version charts. This one’s become a John Lewis speciality – and music strategies increasingly cross over with nostalgic themes these days.
4. The Underdog Story
Reminiscent of A Christmas Carol; the underdog is saved by Christmas magic. For example, misunderstood monsters, unlikely couples finding love, someone lost finds their way, difference finds acceptance. Ideal when mixed with anthropomorphic concepts like when Sainsbury’s featured Mog the cat.
5. Celebrity/Character Cameos
When in doubt, hire Elton John or resurrect a beloved fictional character. The Snowman, Paddington, and this year Waitrose went huge with Keira Knightley and Joe Wilkinson. Basically a celebrity can enhance any of the above strategies, as long as they have a link to Christmas, however tenuous.
It can all get a bit much. Way back in the first century the poet, Martial, said “I hate the crafty and mischievous arts of presents” Then of course it all got a bit much for Jonathan Swift too in the 18th Century “I shall be undone here with Christmas boxes”. And that was a hundred years before Dickens even got his hand in! Somehow getting stuff ended up being equal to being good, which is a bit skewed.
The List
Now, you know and we know that Santa’s list gets misappropriated in an actually very lazy means of parental discipline. But like anything, it has a foundation in truth. And that truth is that there is in fact a list, but it’s not just for kids and it has nothing to do with who gets what. We’ve heard rumours that it’s actually a data analysis; a piece of behavioural segmentation. What’s become clear over the years though is that the data’s a bit… well, hazy. Every person has the capacity of being naughty and nice all at the same time. It turns out that at Christmas, everyone has a sparkle of nice in them, and it’s fun to be a little bit naughty too.
And that’s how Christmas has been marketed throughout history. We give gifts because people want to be nice but traditions also turn things upside down because we want to be fun and naughty, and it’s what the most successful Christmas stories – and marketing campaigns – have at their core. It’s not rocket science is it!
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