ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802 Looking For Christmas in a Muslim Country Mourad Touzani, University of Tunis, Tunisia Elizabeth Hirschman, Rutgers University, USA Ayalla Ruvio, University of Haifa, Israel Consumer research has examined Christmas from several perspectives. Yet the vast majority of these studies have been conducted in Christian North America . Within North America, Christmas has been found to be a major religious festival, an opportunity for riotous consumption, and a sensory-laden holiday. Prior studies have found specific evidence of materialism, generosity, heightened emotionality, and enhanced interpersonal bonding. But we know little of the experience of Christmas in non-Christian cultures. Using interviews collected in Tunisia, we examine how Christmas is constructed by Christians living in a Muslim setting far removed from wintry evergreens. What happens when Santa must ride his sleigh through the sandy desert and Jesus is not viewed by most inhabitants as a holy child? Come and find out! [to cite]: Mourad Touzani, Elizabeth Hirschman, and Ayalla Ruvio (2009) ,"Looking For Christmas in a Muslim Country", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 36, eds. Ann L. McGill and Sharon Shavitt, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 210-213. [url]: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/14259/volumes/v36/NA-36 [copyright notice]: This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/.