Holidays have long been associated with feasting throughout the world. Christmas in particular is thematically a time of abundance and celebration that centers around food. Aside from a central Christmas meal, the giving of food as gifts is a common practice. Advertisers waste no time in preparing how they will market food in new and inventive ways for the Christmas season. They play on the excitement of the season and the increase in food intake among most people to increase sales. Christmas is certainly one of the most profitable times of the year for most retailers.
Though Dickens did not allow advertisements to go along with his Christmas stories such as A Christmas Carol, he did include abundant descriptions of displays of food in his stories that served as advertisements themselves. In A Christmas Carol, when Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by The Ghost of Christmas Present, he first sees him in the midst of an enormous banquet: “Headed upon the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges…” (Dickens 43), and the list goes on. The Spirit of Christmas himself is enthroned upon food. This outrageously long list of detailed food items certainly served to get Dickens’s readers’ mouths watering, thinking of all the delicious treats they will consume this Christmas season. Likewise, the ameliorative gesture that Scrooge makes toward the Cratchit family is to buy them the biggest turkey available, bigger than Tiny Tim himself! Food serves as a redemptive factor for Scrooge as he changes his heart and attitude toward life.
An article from June 2015 in What’s On magazine revealed that M&S, a prominent British grocer, had already released their list for “Christmas food must-haves for 2015.” The list includes “Brussel Sprout Banger, pork pies in the shape of Christmas puddings and a new Christmas quiche, filled with the best bits of the festive lunch.” What’s On claims it’s “the food porn event of the year so far.” This declaration is enough to show the relationship between food and advertising from Dickens’s time to the present: advertisers understand that food can be an irresistible temptation, even more difficult to refuse in the cheer of the holiday season. Dickens’s luscious descriptions of Christmas fare are just as much advertisements for Christmas food as the dramatic summertime revealing of a store’s coming Christmas menu.
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink-news/ms-reveals-christmas-food-must-haves-9556506