The Difficulty of Selling Christmas Cards in August

When is it too early to buy Christmas cards? Most of us leave our Christmas shopping until late November at the earliest. But why is that? Is there is an unspoken taboo against preparing for Christmas too early?

This is the question the Doehla Greeting Cards Company commissioned Ernest Dichter to investigate in 1949. In a report titled “The difficulty of selling Christmas cards in August: A psychological analysis”, the Institute for Motivational Research (IMR) determined to find an explanation to this age old mystery.

There are two reasons why people don’t like to buy Christmas cards in August, IMR found, and they both begin with S: spontaneity and sincerity.

As one housewife who was interviewed said: “I’d never buy my Christmas cards in the summer. I’d never even think of it. I’d have them laying around the house for months.”

A 30 year old office worker agreed: “I don’t see any reason why I should buy Christmas cards before November or December. After all, you buy the cards because you think of the holidays and the friends you want to send them to and not because you’ve got to get it off your mind.”

Another housewife compared it to “buying baby clothes before you know whether you’re going to have a boy or a girl.”

For most people, a spontaneous gesture is a sincere gesture. According to the report, the average person “wants to feel that the Christmas card is a symbol of his emotions – a gift of love – and feels guilty when he becomes aware that he doesn’t really care as much as he’d like to believe. Because of this, he needs to feel that he is acting spontaneously in sending Christmas cards.”

Were this report to be commissioned today however, the title might be “The difficulty of selling Christmas cards at all”. “Is 2014 the year the Christmas card died?” The Guardian newspaper asked earlier this month. Apparently the combination of high postage costs and social media usage is about to render the 171 year old tradition of sending Christmas cards a thing of the past.

Presumably people feel more sincere tweeting Christmas messages because it’s more spontaneous? Perhaps the continual vibrations of a Whatsapp group message feels more festive too? Whatever the reason for the noble card’s decline, I doubt you’ll find people snapchatting “Happy Xmas” any time next August.

American Consumer Culture, 1935-1965 is available from August 2014 and contains over 3,000 reports by Ernest Dichter and The Institute of Motivational Research.