Christmas

The world’s most known and lovable holiday of all. Brings families, joy, and tons of presents together. You’ll never be too old for Christmas. You’ll never be too lonely for it. Christmas is like a big festive tornado. It will come inevitably and you’ll be blown right into the middle of it.

History

Traditions

Marketing Activities

History of Christmas

Christmas holiday celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. So, why doesn’t it called a Christbirth day? The name of this holiday refers to the mass service in memory of God’s son that died for people and then came back to life—The Christ Mass. So, Christmas it is!

But the roots of this holiday go deeper into the times of pagans. Ancient people celebrated this time after the 21st of December as a time when light wins over darkness. Days are getting longer and the nights shorter. It was a festive time, with plenty of wine and meat.

Within times Christians transformed the idea of celebrating the light with a feast into the celebration of the birth of Jesus. But nowadays Christmas has become less religious and more of a family type holiday. People have a day off to spend time with their families and children are all waiting for Santa to come and bring presents.

Wait a minute. Who is Santa Claus in all this Jesus festival? That’s another good question. Santa Claus comes from the Dutch name for Saint Nicolas. In European culture, he is known as a protector of kids and sailors. The legend says that he was a very kind man who was travelling the world and giving away his fortune to the poor. This is how the tradition of giving presents to good children was born. Somehow Santa Claus became the core symbol of Christmas.

Christmas Traditions

Decorating. Christmas tree and the house. Those days when people narrowed their creative decor ambitions to the tree are long gone. Of course, some families and individuals still have traditional fir-trees decorated with lights, colorful ornaments, and sparkles. But the trend now is—Christmas tree without a tree. Anything in the shape of a tree will do. Pile of books, dead tree branch with lights, just lights on the wall. But house decoration is another story. It’s all about showing off and competition. People spend tons of money and time to stand out from the crowd in the neighbourhood or in their social media profiles.

Christmas dinner. Family dinner—that’s the core component of the holiday. The Christmas traditional menu partly resembles Thanksgiving day: stuffed turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy with carrots, turnips, and parsnips. But it can be expanded with other types of meat and poultry: chicken, roast beef, and ham are the popular ones. And a yummy Christmas pudding for dessert.

Presents time. The most exciting Christmas tradition is to open the presents on Christmas morning. To make the waiting more fun—on Christmas Eve some families leave the glass of milk and cookies to treat Santa and guarantee themselves with good presents. Enthusiastic kids even leave carrots for reindeers.

Advent calendar. A great invention to keep kids (or their parents) busy while waiting for Christmas to come. It’s a calendar with 25 closed windows containing some small surprises like candy or LEGO figures in it. The idea is to open one window per day starting from the 1st of December and bring the joy of Christmas closer each day.

Secret Santa. A great activity for friends or colleagues. You don’t have to buy presents for everyone at the party. Just take a draw in advance and pick one name from the hat and buy a present for the exact person. Easy-peasy!

Christmas decorations drive-tour. Some people or even the whole families really enjoy driving around the city or their neighbourhood to gaze upon the Christmas decorations. Some of them even have personal prizes and ratings for all this shining stuff.

Marketing Activities for Christmas

Do you know that big retailers start to prepare their Christmas promo campaigns in January? Don’t worry! We got your sales planning back with this super mega useful marketing calendar. Christmas is all about kindness, miracles, dreams come true, families getting together and presents. Lots of presents.

Decorate your website or create a Christmas landing page. Use the professional design products, materials, and templates to get a merry look of your brand.

Send gifts. At the end of the year it’s time to reward those who were kind and loyal. And it’s time to spark interest in new potential partners or customers.

Go emotional. Use social media to boost your company’s emotional intellect. It’s the best time to do it. You can notice lots of brands preparing touching advertising videos for Christmas that melt the hearts even of the toughest of us.

Discounts and sales. Do some magic. Give an extra 10 percent discount for a big family, for instance. Or for those who have pets. Come up with some extra bonuses. People will appreciate this!

Become a gift expert. If you’re in sales—you’ve got a black belt in advising already. Be useful and inventive. Maybe a bag of nails doesn’t look like a Christmas present but just wait until somebody decides to build a shelter house for a homeless dog.

Colors of Christmas

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Christmas is all about sparkles, glitter, lights, and everything-bright-and-festive stuff. Santa red, dark green, dark gold, and silver are the most prominent, widely-used colors on the Christmas palette. However, lots of brands make their Christmas campaigns in blue, yellow, and black. So it’s up to you which color will symbolize the joy of Christmas for your users. Make it unique but try to stick to the festive mood.

Symbols of Christmas

Santa Claus. A jolly old fellow with a big belly dressed in red in white. With a nice white beard and a bag of presents at his shoulder.

Sleigh. The magical transport that helps busy Santa to visit every house of the world on Christmas Eve. Certainly, it has a hyperspace button hidden somewhere.

Reindeer. The moving force of the sleigh. Eight mighty reindeer. And Rudolph.

Santa’s hat. Red hat with a white fluffy trim and a pompom on top. Nice touch to transform any human or animal into a merry cartoon character.

Christmas stocking. Part of a tradition to leave Christmas stockings at the fireplace for Santa to put presents there. Nowadays, we prepare so many presents that there’s no room under the Christmas tree.

Elves. Santa’s little green helpers. It is believed that elves work all year round to make all the toys and other stuff kids wish for.

Christmas tree. A pine tree or fir-tree decorated with lights, ornaments, and Christmas balls. A spiky clue to look for the long awaited presents.

Candles. Bring some spiritual touch to the present unwrapping fever. Serve as a nice table or window decoration.

Bells. Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, and so on. A very festive and musical symbol of Christmas.

Wreaths. Great decoration for the front door. Can be hand-made from real fir-tree branches or bought on Amazon. Still it’s a great and stylish addition to the house decor.

Christmas lights. Indoors and outdoors. And all over the city. It’s a celebration of light and life, for Christ’s sake.

Presents. Wrapped in shiny paper they are everywhere. Waiting for you.

Egg-Nog. The one and only Christmas drink. An egg-cocktail with alcohol. But these days any alcohol would do. Champagne, for example, is a universal drink for almost any celebration.

Mistletoe. A plant used in Christmas decorations with one special purpose—to encourage kissing. The so-called tradition says that people who get under the mistletoe need to immediately kiss each other.

Sugar Cane. Official Christmas candy. Very sweet. Comes in supporting Santa colors: red & white.

Angel. Some divine touch among all the joyful explosions of Santa symbols.

Cookie man. Gingerbread man is one of the main festive characters after Santa.