Abstract
This article investigates the organization of Christmas in 15 women’s magazines from the 1930s and 2009, using an analytical strategy of close reading to explore the discursive imperatives these texts seem to (re)create around female ‘festive labour’. We arrive at two conclusions: (1) a critique of popular perceptions of the ‘problem of gift giving’ as a contemporary phenomenon; and (2) a shift from the ‘domestic goddess’ discourse of the 1930s to a construction of women’s role in performing Christmas that rests on a somewhat contradictory rendering of managerialism. Our rather pessimistic endpoint is that the pressure on women to pull off the perfect Christmas has intensified—at least in these popular cultural texts—over the last 70-plus years, but at the same time there is a sense here that even the most intensive endeavours are doomed never to entirely succeed.
Introduction: It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas
This article employs a close reading of advertisements, editorials, advertorials, promotions, features and columns in a selection of British and Irish women’s magazines from the 1930s and 2009. Each magazine is the Christmas issue and all are aimed at adult women, especially those with families. In our analysis we track similarities and differences between the two secondary data sets to discuss the ways in which magazines from both eras organize or construct a particular version of Christmas, especially through their advice to women readers on what the call for papers for this special issue called the ‘festive labour process’. We interpret ‘organizing’ here as the process by which these popular cultural texts (re)produce how Christmas is and simultaneously ought to be organized. Whilst our key argument centres on the intersection between the feminine and the domestic within the specific festivities of Christmas, in the context of this special issue, we also contend that our data may point to the amplification and construction of similar processes of organizing in everyday life beyond the (ever extending) Christmas season, if not the practice of management in general. Thus, for us, Christmas represents a critical case of ‘hyper-organization’ shot through with the imperatives of ‘big business’ and as such the themes we discuss below might also be applied to the management of other celebratory occasions. Indeed we might further extend the potential range of our insights if we consider that, according to Lefebvre, (in urban society at least) we are in the age of the festival where even mundane and/or routine occurrences are bursting with opportunities for celebration (Lefebvre, 1984, cited in Gardiner, 2000: 98).
Our discussion suggests, first, that gift giving is constructed in the magazines as a challenge, in which women both are and should be deeply invested. Moreover, we identify an intensification of this construction, such that the contemporary magazines outline a much more complex taxonomy of potential recipients than their predecessors. Whilst this is unsurprising, given the development of advanced consumer capitalism during the 20th century, we find it interesting that the ‘problem of gift giving’ does not appear to be a recent phenomenon and that the sheer array of commodities now constructed as possible gifts apparently exacerbates the ‘problem’ rather than reducing it.
Second, we identify a version of Christmas in these texts as an event demanding highly rational planning. The 1930s magazines strongly suggest that such planning, if undertaken sensibly, will result in a successful staging of the festivities, even though everything in this version is/should be made by hand, from scratch—including meals, gifts and outfits. However, the 2009 magazines organize Christmas as something extremely stressful which is almost impossible to pull off singlehandedly, something in which every opportunity for cutting corners (such as using pre-prepared foods) should be taken. These later texts also construct the festivities per se in a fractured, contradictory way, as compared to the highly unified Christmas of the 1930s magazines. It is almost as if the spread and internalization of managerialism—management as the panacea for all ills—as a way of life in everyday settings (Hancock and Tyler, 2009) is simultaneously celebrated and undermined. So even the most attentive management of the festive labour process emerges in our reading of the 2009 texts as something that can only ever succeed to some extent, at least when undertaken by women.
Of course women’s magazines have long been regarded in feminist cultural studies as problematic sources of identity construction, (re)presenting traditional, oppressive gender norms around domesticity, work, appearance and sexuality (see Gough-Yates, 2003, for a critical overview). Such commentary is usefully summarized in Talbot’s (2007: 47) suggestion that media producers are ‘in a powerful situation. They are in a position to attribute values and attitudes to their addressees, presenting them in a taken-for-granted way’. As such the constructions of Christmas we have inferred from our 15 magazines may well have material effects since, as Hermes (1995: 111) notes based on her empirical data, magazines are often deliberately read by women as ‘self-help’ manuals:
what one has no use for is skipped and highly personal reconstructions of what ails the reader are pieced together. The self-help readers ... are convinced that reading will lead to a better understanding and ultimately solution of their problem.
Still, as Hermes also points out, it is important not to over-state the potential for meanings to be imposed on the reader in a kind of ‘hypodermic syringe’ effect. As such we argue that the meaning of these magazines-as-texts would necessarily emerge from an oscillation between the producers’ intentions as coded into the magazines and reception by the reader via their acculturated senses.
Next, we outline and justify the methodology used to put the article together.
Methodology: In the new old-fashioned way
The idea for the article was born from chance when Samantha Warren’s grandmother passed on a pile of 1930s magazines to her, amongst which (it just so happened) were 11 Christmas issues. We then purchased four magazines at Christmas 2009 to allow us to compare these 11 magazines to contemporary magazines of a similar character and with, as far as we can ascertain, a similar target market. Our sample, therefore, consists of the following 15 magazines:
Good Needlework (December 1930, 1931, 1933, 1935, 1937 and 1938); Model Housekeeping (December 1932, 1933 and 1934); The Needlewoman (December 1933) and Stitchcraft (December 1933).
Good Housekeeping, Red, Woman & Home and Prima (all December 2009). 1 We chose only four here because the 2009 magazines on average are rather more than five times the mean length (423 pages) of the 1930s publications (75 pages): thus four in fact provided roughly twice the volume of data compared to the 11 1930s magazines.
The 1930s magazines contain a mixture of fiction, articles on beauty, fashion and the home, sewing and knitting patterns, recipes, consumer and personal advice, and articles on entertaining children. Stitchcraft, for example, is ‘for the modern woman and her home’ as the inside masthead tells us (12/33: 3), whereas Good Needlework is ‘For The Woman Who Loves Pretty Things’ (e.g. 12/30: 11). Model Housekeeping is the widest ranging in terms of content. But all offer explicit guidance to readers on various aspects of their lives—food preparation, needlework, interior décor, raising children, purchasing goods and services, beauty and so on.
None of these publications remains in print. Good Needlework was incorporated into Woman & Home at some point between August 1936 and January 1942, and disappeared from this title’s cover masthead between January 1959 and June 1960 (Tony Quinn, personal communication, 8th January 2011). Woman & Home of course appears in our 2009 sample. The most recent issue of Model Housekeeping we have located dates back to October 1963, and was for sale online as a vintage collectable. The Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture at Middlesex University, in its Guide to the Magazines & Journals Collection (2009), has The Needlewoman amalgamating with Needlecraft Practical Journal in 1940, to become Needlewoman and Needlecraft. In 1970, its name changed again to Needlewoman. Needlewoman was then incorporated, somewhat ironically, into Stitchcraft in 1977—and Stitchcraft ceased publication in the 1980s. Hence we had to use a different set of magazines for the 2009 sample.
This selection was guided by our aforementioned sense that these four publications constituted, roughly, the 2009 equivalents of our 1930s sample. Good Housekeeping, for example, says it provides ‘unrivalled authority’ coupled with ‘consistent quality, value and entertainment, providing women with the key tools to make better choices about every aspect of her life [sic]’ (National Magazine Company, Good Housekeeping, accessed January 7, 2011). Similar claims are made for Prima (National Magazine Company, Prima, accessed January 7, 2011). Both outlets, then, are clearly intended as Hermes’ ‘self-help manuals’. Red likewise includes coverage of fashion and beauty, celebrity news, travel, interiors, food and drink, health, diet and exercise and finance inter alia. Finally, Woman & Home ‘covers all areas of a woman’s life—but in a fresh, modern way’ (IPC Media, Brand Profile: woman&home, accessed January 6, 2011). All four target ABC1 women of 35-plus (Red Media Pack 2010, accessed January 6, 2011; woman&home 2009 Media Pack, accessed January 6, 2011; National Magazine Company, allaboutyou.com, accessed January 7, 2011). As such, we would argue that what we provide here is a longitudinal contrast of sorts. Certainly Ruspini suggests that
‘Longitudinal’ is a broad term. It can be defined as research in which: (1) data are collected for two or more distinct periods ... ; (2) the subjects or cases are the same, or at least comparable, from one period to the next; and (3) the analysis involves some comparison of data between or among periods. (2003: 181, following Menard, emphasis added)
And of course so much has altered for women in the seven decades or so since the 1930s: the emergence of much more egalitarian beliefs around gender, more freely available and more effective contraception, the legalization of abortion, shifting mores around relationships as reflected in both rising divorce rates and greater acceptance of cohabitation, the tendency to delay or abjure motherhood altogether and dramatic improvements in their educational and occupational opportunities are only the most obvious changes (for a more detailed summary of these social dynamics, see Brewis, 2011). This means that the readers of the 2009 magazines are likely to be very different women from those who consumed the 1930s texts. To connect this back to the topic at hand, this also affects the way that Christmas is/ought to be celebrated: so the 2009 woman is much more likely to face the festive dilemmas created by being a second wife, for example, than her 1930s counterpart.
Furthermore, there are other reasons to analyse the construction of an ideal Christmas in women’s magazines. First, the literature on Christmas that we have found, whilst surprisingly sparse even across disciplines, emphasizes that buying and wrapping gifts, cleaning/ preparing/decorating the home, inviting relatives and friends to celebratory events (especially the day itself), making and serving meals, ensuring everyone is entertained during the festivities and so on are all ‘women’s work’. Men and children form the audience for all of this activity (Cleveland et al. 2003; Fischer and Arnold, 1990; Gurău and Tinson, 2003; Hocking et al., 2002; Laroche et al., 2000; McKechnie and Tynan, 2006; Mortelmans and Damen, 2001; Pollay, 1987; Shordike and Pierce, 2005; Thompson and Hickey, 1989; Tynan and McKechnie, 2009; Wright-St Clair et al., 2005). This of course is predictable enough, given the stereotypical Western expectation that women are the ‘kin keepers’, with responsibility for maintaining familial and friendship ties; they are culturally required to bear the brunt of childcare—and ‘the family members most venerated at Christmastime are children’, according to Fischer and Arnold (1990: 334); women are socialized to be communally-oriented rather than agentically-inclined and often define themselves through the love they show for others; they are predominantly the ‘family purchasing agents’ and have typically been actively ‘trained’ during their formative years to be consumers; and of course women conventionally assume ‘responsibility for planning, cooking and serving foods, particularly within the home’ (Wright-St Clair et al., 2005: 333), which in and of itself can be defined as a element of ‘kin keeping’ (Shordike and Pierce, 2005: 141).
Second, although we have not analysed men’s magazines and so cannot offer any comparison as to the organizing of Christmas in these texts, another dimension of our analysis is its broadly longitudinal character. This is important because of the cyclical, scripted, ritualistic qualities of Christmas, and the ongoing debates about the changing intersection between the sacred and the secular at this time of year, as well as between tradition and modernity. Relatedly, Christmas is a time for remembering and nostalgia, at least according to many of the studies we have consulted (Clarke, 2007; Hocking et al., 2002; McKechnie and Tynan, 2006; Mortelmans and Damen, 2001; Sharaby, 2008; Shordike and Pierce, 2005; Tynan and McKechnie, 2009; Wenell, 2009; Wright-St Clair et al., 2005). So our analysis, whilst in no way representative of the ‘Christmas discourse’ in either the 1930s or the early 21st century in this part of the world, adds to the existing commentary by providing an empirical discussion of change and continuity in this regard which does not rely on first person accounts of festivities past.
As a final justification, and with specific reference to our chosen media, we focus on the construction or organization of Christmas in these magazines as opposed to the ‘audience-oriented’ analysis presented by other literature we have accessed. This includes discussions of how various groups interact with the shopping centre Santa Claus (Thompson and Hickey, 1989); the degree of their ‘involvement’ in Christmas shopping or what kind of gift purchaser/giver they are (Clarke, 2007; Cleveland et al., 2003; Fischer and Arnold, 1990; Laroche et al., 2001; Otnes et al., 1993); how to ‘measure’ Christmas spirit (Clarke, 2007); analyses of attitudes to the oft-trumpeted commercialization of Christmas or the challenges of celebrating a modern Christmas in an ethical or spiritual way (Gurău and Tinson, 2003; Mortelmans and Damen, 2001; Wenell, 2009); whether some Christmas consumption is ‘excessive’ (Edensor and Millington, 2009; Pollay, 1987); or how women (re)create meaning through the production and consumption of the family Christmas (Hocking et al., 2002; McKechnie and Tynan, 2006; Shordike and Pierce, 2005; Tynan and McKechnie, 2009; Wright St-Clair et al., 2005).
Our interest instead is in what the call for papers called the ‘significant self-help industry’ servicing Christmas preparations, including ‘the mass provision of magazines’, and the material this industry presents for the ongoing performance of socially sanctioned feminine identities. We are preceded here by commentators including Dale (2009), Hancock and Tyler (2004) and Tyler (2009), who discuss the discursive organizing of home improvements, lifestyles and sexuality in women’s magazines, but not with a focus on Christmas. Equally, and on a more specifically festive note, McKechnie and Tynan (2006: 137) refer to ‘advertising and fashion systems’, including ‘glossy magazines’. Elsewhere they talk of ‘the active role played by consumers in the construction of consumption meanings as they use marketer-generated materials to create a lucid sense of self’ (Tynan and McKechnie, 2009: 239). However, their research attends to this ‘active role’, whereas ours interprets one element of these ‘systems’ and the ‘marketer-generated materials’ which result.
We have, as suggested earlier, employed a joint, inductive close reading of the magazines as an analytical strategy. This entailed viewing the magazines and any supplements together and identifying every visual and verbal reference to Christmas. In other words, we literally read the magazines as a pair, discussing and then making handwritten notes on each festive reference as it occurred. Two examples are from our reading of GN (12/30): ‘p. 54 Smallish ad for dry cleaning Xmas party frocks {(plan) short time frame}’ and ‘p. 64 Christmas msg from eds suggests 2 types gift—‘duty’ and ‘thrilling’—but all are functional’. One of the key things we decided at this stage, after some debate, was that this initial mapping should be meticulous. Therefore every possible Christmas reference was recorded, however glancing, minute or open to contestation. For example, the same set of notes states ‘p. 23 Baby’s 1st Xmas present (bootees) first explicit mention of Xmas [inside] despite cover’: this is preceded by four other instances in this magazine which we both interpreted as making allusions to Christmas.
To provide a template for analysis, we then discussed the themes emerging from this pass through the data and agreed on those which seemed the most significant and/or commonplace, including gifts, gift recipients, food/ diet, body projects, home decoration, fashion and advice. Although these classifications often overlapped—as in the case of the advice category which was pretty much overarching, or gifts and food, for example—they enabled us to identify commonalities and differences between the 1930s sample and our 2009 comparator. Our approach is also broadly informed by what Jewitt and Oyama (2001) term ‘visual social semiotics’. We have interpreted the potential effects produced by the combination of verbal and visual messages in the magazines as ‘just one element of an interdisciplinary equation which must also involve relevant theories and histories’ (Jewitt and Oyama 2001: 140). So the data we analyse are woven together with theoretical insights to produce a critically situated, nuanced interpretation of their meaning, rather than presenting them in a more traditional ‘literature—data—discussion’ format which belies the interconnectedness of the social semiotic approach.
One last caveat is in order before proceeding. The analysis we offer is very much a joint effort, produced by two white, British, 40-something, heterosexual, non-religious female academics who are absolutely an (ongoing) product of their own time and place. We do not claim that our interpretation is the only one, or indeed superior to the multitude of other potential readings of these cultural texts. Nonetheless, both of us are part of the intended audience for at least the 2009 magazines, and as such ours might also be regarded as incorporating some elements of the audience-oriented analyses we refer to above.
Analysing the data: Doing Christmas right this time
All I want for Christmas (The ‘problem of the gift’)
One of the most striking similarities between the 1930s and the 2009 magazines is an emphasis on the ‘puzzle’ of gift buying. 1930s examples include an advertisement for ‘All British Gift’ books to solve ‘That ever-perplexing question, “what to give?”’ to children (GN 12/31: 6). Elsewhere a half page article on choosing gifts begins ‘How thoughtful we are. How we are concentrating on Christmas plans and presents, and pondering over questions of appropriateness, cost, and the difficulties of selection’. (‘Cora’, MH 12/32: 116). And, in a piece about giving household gifts to female friends and relatives, we are told ‘ONCE again it’s come round—and once again every woman is faced with the annual “what shall I give” problem’ (MH 12/34: 135). Similarly, the introduction to a ‘gift making supplement’ in Stitchcraft (12/32: 14) reads ‘Hundreds of you wrote in to ask for Christmas present ideas, and here they are ...’. The problem of what to give is not confined to female readers either, since a whole page advertisement for 4711 Tosca and Rhinegold perfumes reassures (one assumes) their husbands that ‘you simply can’t be wrong if you give her “Rhinegold”!’ (GN 12/35: 1).
More than 70 years later, a series of front covers offers ‘238 fabulous gifts from £5’ (WH 12/09), ‘192 brilliant gift ideas for all the family’ (P 12/09) and, in Red, 163 ideas for easy gift shopping. This last entails 20 pages of advice for different categories of recipient, plus a full page promotion for Figleaves, which sells ‘designer goodies and luxe accessories’ (R 12/09: 299), with a gratis personal shopper service. The explicit motif across all 15 magazines is that the gifts selected must be ‘Welcome’, ‘charming … just-right’, and ‘Wonderful’. They need to thrill, to be ‘personal’, to offer ‘freedom’, ‘please’, give ‘lasting pleasure’, have the ‘wow-factor’, be ‘appreciated’, include ‘nothing boring’ and ‘make a fairy tale come true’. Presents are required to ‘bring happiness into the lives of our fellow creatures’, be ‘perfect’, ‘gladden’, ‘delight’, signal ‘real friendship’, be ‘what you would wish for yourself’, be ‘loved’, what the recipient ‘Desires’, captivating, ‘wantable’, ‘feel-good’, ‘ideal’ and ‘charming’. They should form part of the recipient’s wish list, ‘INDULGE’ them and bring a ‘twinkle’ to their eye. Finally, all this should come at a bargain cost—and therefore be affordable for all (GN 12/30: 7, 9, 51; GN 12/31: ii, 6, 45; GN 12/33: 4, 5, 14, 30, 32, 33, 43, 45, 54, 61; MH 12/32: 78, 91, 146; MH 12/33: 58, 73, 109, 114; MH 12/34: 73, 115, 128, 135; TN 12/33: 35, 39, 40; GH 12/09: 244; P 12/09: 56, 66, 71, 97; R 12/09: 24, 40, 169–170, 225, 299; WH 12/09: 75–85).
Here we see ample evidence that women ‘are [still] socialized to be more involved in gift giving, observing it in more detail and learning to consider it necessary’ (Fischer and Arnold, 1990: 336). Using the typology of Christmas gift givers identified by Otnes et al. (1993) in their US study, women seem to be classified overall as ‘pleasers’ and ‘providers’ in our magazines. Pleasers deem it crucial to ‘select a gift they believe the recipient will like, based upon perceptions of the recipient’s tastes and interests’ (p. 232), to signal the esteem in which that recipient is held. Providers think gifts should be functional, perhaps something the recipient doesn’t ‘know’ they ‘need’, but also often give a ‘pleasing’ and a ‘providing’ gift to the same person. Revealingly, all but one of Otnes et al.’s respondents were female, and these two categories predominated in their inductive analysis. Likewise, Laroche et al.’s (2000) Canadian data suggest women are much more likely to fall into their ‘motivated giver’ category, whose members ‘want to ensure that the gift will truly be liked by the recipient’ (p. 512).
But to assume that women are profoundly emotionally involved in gift giving, to suggest that we invest in pleasing our nearest and dearest to this extent, as evident in our magazine coverage, is for us to simultaneously assume—indeed instruct—that we ought to be. Tyler (2009) notices the same effect in the construction of ‘ideal’ sexual activities in the ‘self-help’ discourses of men and women’s magazines. Put simply, there is something demonstrably normalizing and individualizing about the texts we have reviewed. Here the ‘Normal is established as a principle of coercion’ (Foucault, 1977: 184, 199). In other words, and borrowing from the same source, these Christmas magazines (re)create the possibility of judgements concerning ‘who’ the individual woman ‘is’ (a motivated giver, wishing to delight and captivate her intimates with Christmas gifts); ‘where’ she ‘must be’ (at the centre of her network of family and friends, with exhaustive knowledge of their wants and needs); ‘how’ she ‘is to be characterized’ (as an investor of time and energy in the careful selection of these gifts); and ‘how’ she ‘is to be recognized’ (as not only pleasing others but deriving pleasure herself from giving perfect gifts).
In this respect we discerned no difference between the 1930s magazines and those from 2009. Compare the assertion that giving Christmas gifts is ‘an emanation from the human soul … the manner of expressing in a material way the heartfelt wish to bring happiness into the lives of our fellow creatures’ (MH 12/33: 114) to the 2009 instruction ‘IF YOU ONLY BUY ONE THING THIS MONTH … A HAND-PICKED 2 CHRISTMAS GIFT’ (R 12/09: 23). Our data thus imply that, although the terms of ‘pleasing’ and ‘providing’ may have changed over time, along with the means by which such activities should be effected—discussed below—the requirement that women fulfil these aims persists.
There is also a seemingly established range of individuals for whom one could or should purchase gifts. In the 1930s magazines these individuals are divided by gender, age and—to a lesser extent—nature of relationship to the giver. So Model Housekeeping (12/32: 65, 66, 77, 108, 116, 148) suggests that appropriate gifts for women include perfume, stockings, scarves, manicure sets, handkerchiefs, tablecloths, and household appliances like irons or vacuum cleaners; for men clothes of all kinds but with emphasis on the functional—such as socks, shirts or ties, or a shaving mug or a cigarette lighter; for male children Meccano and for nieces and nephews woollen underwear. The 1934 issue also suggests ties for men and stockings, scarves, handbags, table runners, evening wraps, writing materials, frocks, costume jewellery and so on for women, electrical gifts for friends like table lamps and kettles, or chocolates, dolls and prams for girls and train sets and Meccano once more for boys (MH 12/34: 53, 56, 100, 115, 126).
In the 2009 magazines there is a similar sort of categorization at work, but one that is a good deal more complex as it adds the dimension of recipients’ interests. Red and Good Housekeeping (12/09) offer ideas for the gourmet, the technophile, the gardener, the environmentalist or charitably minded, one’s intimate, the ‘outdoorsy’ type, men who want to be pampered, teenagers of both genders, the fashionista, and those who enjoy reading or listening to the radio. We might speculate that, during the course of the 20th century, a number of new kinds of ‘personhood’ have emerged, as partly constructed by popular discourse around gift giving. As such those for whom we might buy gifts are no longer simply male or female, adult or child, family or friend. And activities like cooking, gardening, using high-tech devices, recycling or conservation have, following Foucault (1979), perhaps transmogrified into fully fledged ‘personages’ like the gourmet or the gardener.
We could even extend this argument to connect it to other social theorizing around the nature of contemporary identity work as much more individualistic and variegated than in the past, when it tended to be simultaneously scripted and mandated, and to have a stable and collective meaning (e.g. Shilling, 2003; Turner, 2000). Nonetheless what stands out for us is another interpretation; that the ‘women’s work’ of gift selection is perhaps now being organized as even more demanding, even more laden with symbolic meaning, even more to be approached like a military campaign than it was 70 or more years ago. We return to this observation in our conclusions.
Deck the halls (The festive domestic goddess)
But Christmas is more than a time for gift giving. It also revolves around decorations, dressing up, food and drink and socializing. Indeed as Joanna Weinberg, writing in Red, suggests, ‘when you gather the people you love under one roof, your instinct is to pack them so full of food and love that it will last the whole year’ (12/09: 273). In order to pull this off, our women’s magazines suggest, everything needs to be planned carefully in advance. So we see exhortations in the 1930s magazines to ‘Do Your Christmas Shopping Early!’ in an advertisement for a Dublin department store (MH 12/32: 65; MH 12/33: 96) and a reassuring note that ‘many “last minute” Christmas Gifts are featured in the January Issue on sale December 9th’ (GN 12/38: 9—emphasis added). Similarly, in a two-page guide to preparing Christmas dinner, Mrs Hughes-Hallett instructs that, although Christmas is ‘a very busy time for the housewife … if she has things well planned beforehand and a shopping list made out in time, it should be comparatively easy to do the rest’ (MH 12/33: 102).
Other coverage warns us to plan children’s parties carefully to avoid gaps in activity, as well as ordering Christmas cakes and puddings and purchasing other provisions ahead of time ‘To ensure against disappointment’ (MH 12/34: 77–78, 133; GN 12/35: 2). We also see a two- and a half-page article (MH 12/33: 71–72, 115) on looking one’s best at Christmas events, where Ann Capell suggests
I think it is a little bit our own fault if we don’t enjoy ourselves as much as we expect, for very often we put everything off to the last minute, and on the great day prepare our toilet in a violent hurry and tear off all hot and bothered.
We can even achieve a ‘Lovely Bust for Xmas’ with the Beautipon amazing vegetable flesh former 3 (GN 12/37: 61). And then there is the recommendation that readers ‘SEND TINY GIFTS INSTEAD OF CHRISTMAS CARDS’ (12/33: 16). These are all hand-made and include pincushions and comb cases.
Thus Christmas seems to be constructed in the earlier texts as a series of activities which can be achieved without much difficulty as long as they are planned and undertaken properly—as in the ‘comparatively easy’ suggestion from Model Housekeeping (12/33) above. This is significant because there is a substantial amount of emphasis in these magazines on creating Christmas gifts, clothes and food from scratch—such as the highly prescriptive advertisement (MH 12/33: 130), the strapline for which reads ‘Of course you’re going to bake your own Christmas fare this year!’. In other magazines there are patterns for a wide variety of hand-made gifts, as well as for dresses and costumes for oneself and one’s children, and the predictable series of recipes for every component of the Christmas meal, party menus for children and adults and advertisements for the necessary constituents. And one advertisement suggests readers ask their husbands to ‘write to the SINGER Shop about your Xmas present’ ahead of time, so that “by making gifts instead of buying” the sewing machine can begin paying for itself straight away’ (GN 12/33: iii; MH 12/33: 117).
Perhaps we should not be surprised that outlets such as Good Needlework, The Needlewoman and Stitchcraft emphasize making-not-buying since these are rather more narrowly focused—on the hobby or craft of needlework—than Model Housekeeping or indeed our four 2009 publications. However, this motif is as pronounced across MH as it is across the other 1930s magazines—as our analysis above demonstrates. Furthermore, there is a very different sort of emphasis in the 2009 sample, as we will see.
Returning to the academic literature, the findings from a cross-cultural research project on food preparation by older women at Christmas in Auckland and Kentucky, and at Songkran (the Thai New Year celebration), seem to us to be instructive in this regard. So Hocking et al. (2002), Shordike and Pierce (2005) and Wright-St Clair et al. (2005) refer to their US and New Zealand respondents, who are 65 or older, as likewise emphasizing that the best kind of Christmas fare is prepared from scratch. The US respondents began to actively plan the festive menu some time around Thanksgiving (late November in the US), and suggested the dinner table might be set up to a week in advance as well as referring to some two weeks of clearing away afterwards. Further, although some delegation of tasks around the meal (notably to female relatives), or even its total relocation, does occur, for these respondents ‘Having the Christmas meal in the home of their mother is very important to the family’. Equally, as the family matriarch they are the ‘primary creator’ of that meal (Shordike and Pierce, 2005: 143, 144). In these studies the traditional cycle of Christmas meal preparation is an annual ritual which these women tend extremely carefully.
The overwhelming tenor of these data, as the researchers point out, is that the overlapping identities of wife, mother, hostess and home-maker are central to the respondents’ self-projects. As a result ‘the act of cooking becomes a ceremonial statement’ (Shordike and Pierce, 2005: 140), not to mention the planning and coordination which underpins the production of the Christmas dinner, in which they validate themselves ‘through other[s’] consumption’ (Wright-St Clair et al., 2005: 345). At the same time, these women expressed an ambiguous relationship with the ‘foundations’ of this identity ‘in the lives of the women who have gone before them’ (Wright-St Clair et al., 2005: 336). That is to say, their mothers, aunts and grandmothers are remembered as having staged Christmas dinners without any help, in much less sophisticated technological conditions, often for larger numbers of people and with a goodly measure of humility (also see Hocking et al., 2002: 121). The respondents feel obliged to ‘emulate’ these heroic performances on the one hand, whilst also discussing the ‘pressure to get everything done … dreading Christmas, especially for the working woman, and looking forward to getting it over and done with’ (Wright-St Clair et al., 2005: 337).
For us this is significant because these older women have clearly inherited ‘a lineage and tradition of food occupations at Christmas’ (Shordike and Pierce, 2005: 141) from their female forebears—who themselves would have formed the audience for the women’s magazines of the 1930s. At the same time they express ambivalence about this inheritance and oftentimes are happy to abdicate responsibility for the meal entirely as they age. Some also accept that their daughters, despite having been socialized into the same lineage, have never been willing to invest as much time and effort into the process as they have.
Relatedly, McKechnie and Tynan (2006: 136–137) report of their qualitative British study that most of their female participants ‘were of the opinion that, for adults at least, Christmas was less of a reality-suspending event and more of an occasion demanding a lot of hard work instead’. These women talked of the enormous expenditure of time and effort on cleaning the house before, during and after the festivities plus intensive and expensive grooming of their homes, including buying Christmas trees, lights, candelabras, wreathes and tableware. Elsewhere the same respondents discuss how stressful the preparations are; how they worry about getting decorations and gifts wrong and upsetting family members. For the older women in particular a ‘successful’ Christmas meant gathering the family together and ensuring they were all well fed, warm and happy, even though the work involved often meant they were too tired or ill to enjoy the day themselves (Tynan and McKechnie, 2009). As Pollay (1987: 140—following Barnett) succinctly puts it, in a much earlier piece of work, for many women Christmas is experienced as ‘a period of frenetic activity, often carried out with self doubts about the wisdom and necessity of it all’.
To draw these observations together, our 1930s magazines clearly and unequivocally reproduce a ‘domestic goddess’ discourse. This is reported in the US and New Zealand data as a matrilineal legacy—although at the same time these data indicate a contemporary rejection of the self-same discourse—and we identify a similar sort of trajectory in McKechnie and Tynan’s UK study.
Rage against the machine? (The difficulty of ‘doing’ Christmas)
Relatedly, in our 2009 magazines Christmas seems to us to be presented explicitly in terms of the difficulty of ‘doing it all’, and there is a clear emphasis on labour saving of various kinds. So alongside pages of recipes and advice on home decoration we see a ‘Don’t stress it, cheat it’ feature (R 12/09: 254) recommending a range of ready-made Christmas foods. The same issue offers two pages of tips on ‘Fast festive’ make-up (which can be done in the back of a taxi, apparently), toning exercises, hairstyles, fake tans and so on plus ‘TIPS, SECRETS AND CHEATS FOR AN EASIER, SIMPLER CHRISTMAS’ in terms of home decoration (pp. 221–222, 280). It also contains an article offering advice to three women who feel overwhelmed by Christmas in various ways (pp. 306–310).
Then there is an article in Good Housekeeping featuring celebrity advice where a chef and restaurateur, while emphasizing the need to set aside enough time, also emphasizes that a stress-free Christmas is one where you ‘share the workload’ and keep all menus simple, and preferably heavy on things that can be prepared in advance (GH 12/09: 28). There is also a ‘work-life balance’ feature advising on one-stop shopping and an easy Christmas wardrobe from LK Bennett (pp. 47–48) and 21 beauty tips for looking ‘groomed and gorgeous with only minutes to spare’, in fact ‘in less time than it takes to prepare the Brussels sprouts’ (pp. 82–86). The same theme is repeated in ‘THE BUSY WOMAN’S GUIDE TO FESTIVE cakes’ (pages 196–200), where tips are offered on decorating a shop-bought cake. Finally in the same issue we should note the Christmas ‘survival guide’, 25 tips to unwind, titled ‘All is calm’, and a feature on getting away for Christmas so as to avoid ‘festive entertaining’ altogether (GH 12/09: 123–124; 130–131; 224–228).
Similarly Prima (12/09: 80–82) offers its readers the ‘Really Useful Guide to Christmas’ over two pages, packed with 17 ‘stress’, ‘money’ and ‘time’ savers including five ideas for being a ‘speed queen’ in decorating the house. Even after the event, we are extolled to continue the time-saving campaign with a ‘10 Point Plan for Dealing with Leftovers’ from the Christmas dinner (pp. 112–113). Elsewhere Woman & Home editor Sue James reminds us that ‘We all do so much to make Christmas special. The key of course, is planning ahead …’ (12/09: 5). But the content of the rest of the magazine—for example, dealing with ‘party politics’ and remaining the ‘life and soul’ of Christmas parties (p. 67), ‘surviving the family break’ (p. 128) and a health feature on coping with ‘the seasonal angst naturally’—suggests even the most meticulous Christmas planner cannot in reality get it wholly right.
Also in contrast to the 11 1930s magazines, across all four 2009 texts there are only two advertisements for the constituents for home-made gifts—for Billington’s mincemeat (GH 12/09: 254) and Hobbycraft (R 12/09: 166, WH 12/09: 208)—and similarly few promotions for ingredients for meal preparation. Another common theme is that Christmas is so stressful it often creates feelings of being unable to measure up to discursive mandates—such as articles on the difficulties of being a childless couple at this time of year and the iniquities of the round-robin letter, or coverage of how habits like drinking too much resurface as a coping mechanism (R 12/09).
Here we might observe that the rejection of the ‘domestic goddess/ doing it all’ discourse is in itself an imperative of kinds, one that ‘speaks of some harsh realities … the oppressive and tyrannical nature of responsibilities and the injustice that these should fall inequitably on one person’ (Hughes, 2002: 114). This discourse apparently requires of ‘right-thinking’ women that they do not fall prey to the ‘post-1970s cultural mandate that they could combine meaningful work and mothering, at a standard that they would find acceptable, while also preserving time for friendships, leisure, and volunteer work’ (Morell, cited in Park, 2005: 381). In the context of this article, and of the 2009 popular cultural texts, it insists that women do not sacrifice themselves on the altar of obsessive festive preparations, that they take every short cut and involve others in completing the to-do list. Yet many of the so-called time/money/health/sanity saving tips mean doing more than might otherwise have been necessary (e.g. a ‘time-saving’ feature on making wrapping paper rather than buying it or the tips for icing a bought cake referred to above—one of which takes an hour). Furthermore, there is no suggestion in the 2009 magazines that ‘doing nothing’ for Christmas is an option.
There is a certain symmetry in such constructions given that Christmas is routinely identified as a holiday or festival when profane, linear time becomes sacred or cyclical time, a period which is ‘severed from the sequence of all the other days and from regular human activity’ (Sharaby, 2009: 583, following Shavid), one allowing for an almost literally blessed respite from the daily grind and a release of accumulated pressure. Shordike and Pierce (2005: 144), likewise, argue that ‘The ritualisation of Christmas allows people to escape from linear time into cyclical time, into idealized ritual gathering and nostalgia that provide security and comfort’. On the other hand, as this quotation suggests, it is precisely the attendant rituals which enable this transition from linear to cyclical. To be sure, as Hocking et al. (2002: 117, following Bevir) point out, traditions ‘are merely a starting point that shapes but does not determine what people will actually do or believe’. And there is plenty of evidence of remaking of traditions across the New Zealand and US data as well as coverage encouraging the same in the 2009 magazines—like the article about three families’ new Christmas traditions (R 12/09: 294–298). However, if we recall the discussion earlier about the work of kinship being ‘women’s work’, then this presumably entails that Christmas must not and cannot be entirely reconfigured in order to endure in a recognizable form. This indicates it is simultaneously understood as a time for escape and a break from standard routine, but one which can only be facilitated by a considerable investment of effort by women in the necessary rituals.
Hochschild’s (1997) study of the US long hours culture identifies a subject position—the ‘Busy Bee’—which might also be relevant here. The Busy Bee is an archetype (usually female) who thrives on pressure and an unbelievably hectic schedule. Another way of looking at our analysis of the 2009 magazines, then, is to suggest it is precisely this archetype to whom these magazines are ‘talking’. Moreover, as Hochschild (2009) has argued elsewhere, it is through the (re)construction of such archetypes that a managerialist discourse of strategic planning and attention to detail is (re)legitimated, since ‘busy people need strategies’ to cope with the demands of their lives, whether at Christmas or in the everyday. And this ‘keeping busy’ by fervently managing all the tasks she ‘has’ to do also prevents the Busy Christmas Bee from thinking about why she might not have to do them. As Hochschild (2009: 105) succinctly puts it, ‘continual busyness by its nature inhibits the individual from thinking about non-busy-bee issues—which can, of course, include such issues as why one is so busy, and the purpose behind it’.
In fact the 2009 magazines appear to construct Christmas as a somewhat fractured event per se:
when we can eat and drink as much as we please (e.g. newsreader Natasha Kaplinsky’s account of how her mother-in-law ‘cooks a big Norwegian feast, and nobody can walk for about five hours afterwards!’—GH 12/09: 20) but at the same time should control our intake of rich food and alcohol (like one woman’s account of how she will be staying dry at Christmas—R 12/09: 325–325);
when we should spend as much as we like but also beware of frenzied over-shopping (articles bemoaning an upsurge in ‘Scrooge-itis’ due to the global recession—GH 12/09: 45—and pages of advertisements for designer goods juxtaposed with ideas for money-saving at Christmas and tips on how to avoid buying too much);
which we need to organize with inch-perfect precision but simultaneously when getting things wrong might make for more frivolity all round (as suggested in an article about a woman cooking Christmas dinner for the first time—R 12/09: 91–92);
when we need to do it all ourselves (like ‘superwoman’ Camila Batmanghelidjh, director of the Kids Company charity—GH 12/09: 50), but at the same time should not pressure ourselves to do it all; and
when we can cut lots of corners with expert tips and advice but should attempt to cram more into the time that we save, such as creating place settings for the Christmas dinner table (GH 12/09: 145–155).
As such, these texts for us reproduce what Koropeckyj-Cox and Pendell (2007: 913, following Blair-Loy) call ‘competing moral frameworks regarding [women’s] devotion to work and family, which are deeply encoded in social structures and cultures’ and which ‘provide a contradictory and morally-charged environment’ in which to navigate a socially appropriate feminine identity project. This can be compared to a homogeneously sentimental, happy and peaceful Christmas as constructed in the 1930s magazines, where it is possible perhaps to be lonely but even this is a very muted theme—such as the story entitled ‘Three lonely people’ which ends with the trio being brought ‘all together’ by ‘the Spirit of Christmas’ so that they ‘need never be lonely any more’ (MH 12/33: 124).
Conclusion: On the twelfth day of Christmas
Above we have presented a tapestry of theoretically informed data analysis that can be summarized as follows.
1. The ‘problem’ of giving gifts is not new
We consider this interesting because it seems to fly in the face of popular perceptions regarding the commercialization of Christmas that has accompanied the rapid development of consumer capitalism in the post-war years especially. In our 1930s magazines, gift giving is similarly constructed as something that does not come easily—even with a more limited range of commodities on offer. As Storey (2008: 20) remarks, perhaps it is misguided to ‘bemoan the fact that Christmas is too commercial; it was invented as a commercial festival … part of what was being celebrated was the achievements of industrial capitalism—conspicuous consumption in a market economy’. Likewise, the gift-giving ethic (and associated festive purchasing) can be seen as emblematic of conspicuous consumption throughout the Victorian era (Dodd, 2008).
2. The criteria for choosing appropriate gifts have increased dramatically
However, we also suggest that—according to our small and non-representative sample at least—the criteria on which one must segment one’s gift recipients and choose appropriate presents have apparently become more complex. This seems to indicate that the ‘problem of the gift’ is potentially greater since there are more ways in which women are expected to get it ‘right’ and, conversely, more opportunities for getting it ‘wrong’. For us this has additional implications for women’s identities as ‘successful’ gift givers and by extension their feminine identities more generally—traditionally premised on kin-keeping, taking primary responsibility for childcare, being communally-oriented and shopping for the family. It also reminds us that the mantra of ‘choice’ in advanced consumer capitalism—and perhaps especially at Christmas—may serve to render life more stressful precisely by giving us more options to select from.
3. It was possible for a competent woman to ‘do’ Christmas in the 1930s magazines
Whilst we would absolutely urge caution around interpreting this pre-war ‘domestic goddess’ discourse too positively on account of its positioning of women as care-givers, home-makers, slaves to the domestic sphere, etc., we nonetheless observe an affirmation of women’s agency here that at least acknowledges their skill and capability. What we find particularly noteworthy is the message that Christmas can be successfully navigated because of the housewife’s expertise. Of course we have no direct way of knowing if this was actually the case in the 1930s household, nor at what cost to the women concerned, but we nevertheless detect a certain ‘surety’ of advice that affirms women as effective and efficient in their own right.
This interpretation is echoed by Braithwaite’s (1995) review of ‘agony aunt’ advice given by women’s magazines in the same period. He gives an example from a 1938 Woman’s Friend, where a reader asks ‘how can I be certain of keeping my party frock clean when washing up on Christmas Day?’ The answer to which was obvious: ‘By wearing an old mackintosh instead of your overall. Button the coat right up to the neck and you are absolutely safe’ (cited in Braithwaite, 1995: 49). Whilst we might gaze back on these texts and find them amusing, naïve, even distasteful, they demonstrate a ‘no nonsense’ approach to the feminine identity project which women were able to undertake without particular recourse to specialist assistance, and with confidence.
4. The 2009 Christmas must be, yet simultaneously cannot be, strategically managed
In contrast to the conclusion above, Christmas as organized by the four 2009 magazines is both complex and contradictory. It appears to be fraught with the possibility of partial failure no matter how hard the woman reader tries to control it. The only way to get some kind of grip on proceedings is to utilize managerialist tools, to make a virtue of ‘effectiveness, efficiency, measurement, achievement, control and … entrepreneurialism’ (Hancock, 2009: 7). We see a lot of the same discourse at work in the earlier magazines, which echoes Dale’s (2009) observation that management-as-practice has its roots in the running of the home of the years prior to the Industrial Revolution. But in the 2009 texts a successful British Christmas in the early 21st century only seems to be possible if you-the-woman-reader utilize the principles of strategic planning and accept ‘defeat’ because you probably cannot do it all anyway (although you should try). In these magazines at least, managerialism is certainly not an ‘unproblematic and coherent orientation to the world’ (Hancock, 2009: 7).
In sum, then, our broadly longitudinal analysis of the construction of Christmas in women’s magazines, rather depressingly, appears to indicate that not very much has changed in terms of imperatives around women’s participation in the festive labour process. Taken to its logical conclusion, and assuming there is something in what we have said despite its limitations, we could conclude that women today are (a) under more pressure to perform Christmas perfectly than they were in the 1930s; (b) (still) advised that in order to do so they must adopt cool-headed, strategic planning but even then (c) they are to some extent doomed to failure. Perhaps, then, management—of Christmas or whatever else—really isn’t for girls …