This is the last Slow Futures of 2023.
Whether this is the first issue you’ve read or the thirtieth, thanks so much for subscribing. The community of people interested in the slower aspects of change is so much bigger and stronger than I’d hoped – it’s just great to see there’s so many people (almost) as interested in boring charts as me.
We’ll be back in 2024 with more of the same (😉)
We’re closing Slow Futures’ inaugural year with a first – a chart with no trend data at all. Here’s some data from a couple of questions we included in the Trajectory Optimism Index in October.
Christmas starts earlier every year, doesn’t it? Christmas is no longer a one-day religious festival and is now a multi-week epic. Part of that is willed by us, the population who celebrate it. Are we secretly happy to see festive gear in the shops in October?
The key statistics from this data:
Only 1% of us see Christmas as just a one-day affair
Only 16% see it as just being Christmas Eve-Boxing Day
Roughly the same proportion (15%) see it as a four-week event lasting from early December to early January
As we don’t have historical data for this trend we can’t say for certain that it’s a long established trend. But my hunch is that it is, and that it will endure. One of the reasons for that is the way other patterns of life are changing to facilitate longer Christmasses. Part of that is commercial – longer festive periods mean more time to sell us things – but part of it is driven by us, too.
In the same survey in October we asked about working patterns over Christmas. The vast majority of workers have some time off over the period – beyond just the bank holidays. 59% have the whole of the period between Christmas and New Year off, with an extra 10% having that week and some time either before or after. A small proportion (3%) have time off before Christmas, between Christmas and New Year and after New Year. All in all, only one in four workers have no extra time off over the festive period.
A significant minority of workers (38%) say they’re taking more time off over Christmas than they used to – something that rises amongst those on higher incomes (47%) and those with the highest qualifications (52%).
What does this mean?
One important conclusion: don’t feel guilty about taking time off over Christmas, virtually everyone else is doing it too. In fact, the more it happens the more normal it gets – a kind of network effect.
The reason we’re confident this won’t change is because it’s a manifestation of the Deregulation of Life. This is one of Trajectory’s Macro Trends, and simply describes how we have more freedom to do what we want when we want. Our lives are slightly less likely to be governed by routine than they were and more likely to be individualised to our own rhythms than before. That’s true of both the minutiae of daily life and the broader life course. It applies to flexibility in work and leisure, the arrival of new day parts in hospitality (all day breakfast, anyone?) and to the deregulation of Christmas.
This has happened quite gradually - as slow moving change tends to - but there are likely to be limits on how much more deregulated Christmas can become.
Annual leave is finite, for most people. As more time gets taken off at Christmas, does it get taken from other parts of the year, that stay busy (perhaps making it harder to take a week off at a time)? More annual leave at Christmas doesn’t just mean more time at home, but more holidays abroad too.
Finally…
Everyone else is doing lists at this time of year, so we’re jumping on the bandwagon.
Here are the top 10 articles from the Slow Futures archive for 2023, based on the number of (very interesting – please get in touch!) emails they generated in response to me:
The Shape of Marriage – a look at 180 years of trends in marriage data
We Don’t Trust Politicians – guess what, we think politicians lie – and pretty much always have done
Two-thirds of a plum – a slightly depressing looking at the result of 20 years of healthy eating campaigns
We’re never going to stop working – an optimistic (I think) assessment of the impact of AI on work
Private Morality – looking at how tolerance of social rules hasn’t changed, but how we’ve become massively more liberal on other issues
Researcher, leave them kids alone – what has and hasn’t changed in the qualities we value in children
Covid Caution – the proportion of people concerned about covid hasn’t changed in the last 18 months, and is concentrated amongst younger groups
The Generation Game – generational change is really, really slow
Balls – countering a popular myth about the weight of footballs and ‘real’ men
Risky Business – our appetite for risk is consistently non-existent
Thanks again for subscribing. Have a fantastic Christmas, and see you in 2024.
Tom