The Frontline Christmas Gift: Promoting Home-front Patriotism in Second World War Sweden
Room 7 Session 7: History of consumption organized by Fia Sundevall
Abstract
This paper deals with the Frontline Christmas Gift – Fältjulklappen – in Sweden during the Second World War. The annual campaign was organized by a national committee in which commercial actors, the military, and non-profit organizations joined forces to market home front patriotism by sending gifts to all soldiers and auxiliary service staff on duty on Christmas Eve. It was directed at civilians (primarily women) from the end of November to mid-December each year 1940-1944, and the presents were distributed by the military, with the help of female auxiliary corps, to deployed (male) soldiers and other military staff on guard (also primarily male, but some women too). Ultimately, 400 000 such gifts were delivered over the course of the war, as the campaigns successfully mobilized the resources of consumer society (advertising, shop windows, sales clerks), traditional gender roles (the devoted/protected woman in the service of her male guardian), and the commercial potential of patriotism and idealism. Drawing on archival documents (including correspondence, newspaper clippings, protocols, reports and the like) from the Frontline Christmas Gift national committee, this paper explores how established practices associated with consumer society and heterosexualized gender norms were both preserved and adapted during a period of significant upheaval through a national ritual of collective gift-giving. The gifts, we argue monetized a specific notion of (female) obligations and (male) “needs”, and thereby sought to boost the nation’s morale while at the same embedding it in Swedish consumer society.
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