Public elf warning — Christmas really is coming earlier each year
A study in Britain has found that people are now thinking about the festive season as early as mid August — almost three months earlier than in 2007 — according to a study of internet searches for terms such as ‘Santa Claus’, ‘elf’ and ‘presents’ published by the Royal Statistical Society (RSS).
Data analyst Nathan Cunningham looked at the volume of Christmas-related Google searches in each of the past six years to work out the probability of each week being defined as ‘Christmas’ or ‘not Christmas’ with the help of cluster analysis and an algorithm he originally created for research into fossil pollen.
