In India’s festive advertising calendar, Christmas increasingly arrives without the spectacle that is associated with the season. There are campaigns, films, and brand messages, but rarely the kind of omnichannel, high-decibel narratives that accompany Diwali or even regionally anchored festivals like Onam. Instead, Christmas campaigns often surface as short digital films, social-first ideas, or AI-generated experiments that feel lighter, quieter, and somewhat restrained. The question is not whether brands show up for Christmas- they do, but why they show up differently. Is Christmas truly a weaker sibling in festive advertising, or has it been consciously repositioned by marketers as something else altogether?
Festive advertising in India has always followed consumption. Diwali’s dominance has long been tied to its ability to unlock purchasing across categories- jewellery, apparel, electronics, home, food and across geographies. Christmas, by contrast, has never been a universal buying trigger. As Mayank Pravinchandra Shah, Vice President, Parle Products, points out, festival advertising today is no longer an exception-driven exercise but a norm shaped by what people actually buy, and when.
“The thing with festivals is that advertising largely follows consumption,” Shah explains. He elaborates, “Diwali makes commercial sense because it drives large-scale purchases across categories. Over time, many more events and festivals have entered the marketing calendar, but brands remain active mainly where there is real consumption potential. Christmas has a different set of categories like, cakes, gifting, some indulgence products and you’ll see those brands investing more actively. The scale is never universal, because the buying behaviour itself isn’t.” That logic applies even to Diwali, Shah adds, where advertising spikes are concentrated among categories that see heightened demand during that festival. Christmas, in that sense, is not ignored but segmented.
Brands don’t disappear; they simply calibrate their presence to the nature of consumption the festival enables. If fewer categories peak, fewer brands invest heavily. This explains why Christmas advertising often looks narrower in both budget and media mix.
Yet consumption alone does not explain the creative choices brands make. Even when brands do show up for Christmas, their campaigns often rely on familiar visual cues like snow, Santa, winter landscapes or imagery that has little organic connection to Indian geography or lived experience. This is where technology, particularly AI, has found an easy foothold. Shah sees this shift less as a compromise and more as a practical response, “Using AI or digital tools makes it easier to build those worlds. It’s not that brands prefer AI only for Christmas, but it helps create those backgrounds affordably. Even Diwali ads have started using AI now.”
If AI lowers production barriers, budget timing lowers appetite. By the time Christmas arrives, brands have already spent aggressively on a packed retail calendar. Sales-led moments like Big Billion Days, Diwali promotions, End of Reason Sale (EORS), and Black Friday-style events cluster tightly between September and November. By December, many annual budgets are simply depleted.
For younger, design-led brands, this reality has reshaped how Christmas is approached. Tanisha Jatia, Founder and Brand Lead, Urban Jungle, says Christmas is rarely treated as a demand spike internally. Instead, it becomes a creative pause, a moment to talk, not push. “At Urban Jungle, Christmas is more of a brand-building moment than a sales-driven one. By December, most budgets are already deployed across Diwali and major sales events. So Christmas becomes an opportunity for strong creative storytelling, social-first, global-looking content, rather than aggressive advertising. It allows us to stay culturally relevant without the pressure of conversion,” Jatia explains.
Yasin Hamidani, Director, Media Care Brand Solutions, echoes the thought and sees Christmas less as a missed opportunity and more as a conscious trade-off, “Christmas is often deprioritised not because it lacks relevance, but because of timing and scale.” Hamidani explains, “By December, budgets are already consumed by Diwali and sale-driven moments. Unlike Diwali or Onam, Christmas doesn’t have pan-India retail urgency, so brands treat it as a softer emotional checkpoint rather than a conversion-heavy opportunity.”
This framing raises an important question: if Christmas is not expected to deliver immediate ROI, does it automatically get demoted in the hierarchy of festive planning? Research suggests the answer is yes. According to Praveen Nijhara, CEO, Hansa Research, Christmas rarely qualifies as a ‘must-win’ moment in Indian media plans. He explains, “In most national brand calendars, Christmas ranks much lower in festive budget allocation. It’s not treated with the same strategic importance as Diwali or even Onam. Christmas budgets are often a fraction of Diwali spends and are usually carved out as tactical or incremental allocations rather than core investments. That’s because the festive season in India is not just cultural — it’s deeply commercial.”
Data reinforces this imbalance. Hansa Research estimates that Diwali alone commands anywhere between five to ten times the media and creative spend of Christmas for large consumer brands, accounting for nearly 35–45% of annual festive advertising budgets. Even Onam, despite being regional, often outpaces Christmas in focused southern markets. The reasons are structural: Diwali sits at the intersection of culture, commerce, and timing, while Christmas follows an already exhaustive sales cycle.
So where does that leave Christmas creatively? Increasingly, as a testing ground. Without the pressure to drive immediate sales, brands appear more willing to experiment with tone, format, and technology. Short films, digital-first storytelling, and AI-led visuals dominate, not necessarily because brands lack ambition, but because the stakes are lower.
Nijhara notes, “There is a clear rise in short-format, social-first Christmas campaigns. Engagement metrics show these formats deliver emotional recall and efficient reach without the cost of large productions. Brands are comfortable experimenting during Christmas because it’s emotionally rich but commercially low-risk. The objective shifts from scale to sentiment.”
That sentiment-driven approach also explains why Christmas advertising often feels global rather than local. Snowy visuals, universal themes of kindness, and generic holiday warmth travel easily across platforms and across markets. For brands operating in increasingly borderless digital environments, Christmas offers a globally recognisable cultural shorthand that doesn’t require heavy localisation.
From a media planning perspective, this repositioning is deliberate. Hamidani also points to AI’s growing role in this shift, “Christmas has become a natural testing ground for AI-led storytelling. Short films, generative visuals, personalised greetings — these formats work because the festival allows warmth without pressure. AI helps brands stay present and creative at lower cost while still delivering an emotional brand moment.”
So is success defined just by scale and spend, or by relevance and resonance? If Christmas delivers engagement without demanding heavy investment, does that make it weaker or simply different?
The industry seems divided. On one hand, Christmas advertising is seldom the source of blockbuster campaigns. On the other, its emotional universality allows brands to experiment in ways they might avoid during higher-stakes festivals. As Nijhara points out that Christmas rarely qualifies as a 'must-win' moment in media plans, marketers like Jatia see that very lack of commercial pressure as what allows the festival to function as a space for lighter, more experimental storytelling.
Yet the risk is that Christmas becomes permanently boxed into this ‘lite’ category. The festival remains present, but never central. Whether brands will ever reclaim it as a full-bodied campaigning moment remains an open question. For now, the advertising agency sees Christmas as emotionally meaningful, commercially modest, and creatively convenient. And perhaps that, more than budget or technology, explains why Christmas feels like the quieter sibling, not because it cannot be loud, but because brands have decided it doesn’t need to be.
