Christmas & New Year in Belgium: Dutch vs. French vs. English

For New Year's Eve, I analyzed the Google search volume for Christmas and New Year-related terminology in Belgium's first (Dutch) and second language (French) as well as today's international lingua franca (English). This meant Kerst/Kerstfeest/Kerstdag/Kerstman vs. Noël (Christmas) vs. Nieuwjaar, vs. Nouvelle Année/Nouvel An (New Year) vs. Christmas/Santa Claus/New Year:



For Christmas, French won clearly while for the New Year Dutch narrowly beat out French. English was of course behind though when taking both holidays together not insignificant: Belgium is indeed becoming more and more international in its population and orientation. Why the two holidays showed opposite patterns as far as the primary languages were concerned was unclear. Maybe the search volume just wasn't big enough. Anyway, let's have a look at the rankings for the different (groups of) terms as far as the 11 provinces were concerned—treating Brussels as a province for convenience's sake.


Yellow indicates a Dutch term or Dutch-speaking province while turquoise marks French terms and French-speaking provinces. The capital district of Brussels is bilingual. As expected, the Dutch terms came first in a Dutch-speaking province while the French ones did in a French-speaking province. The English terms were searched most in a Dutch-speaking province (Limburg) and Brussels. On average though, Antwerp won out, helped by its larger population; Walloon Brabant came in last due to its low population. In the bottom section of the table, I made a quick attempt to rework the ranking numbers taking the population in consideration. Interesting was here that while for the individual terms nothing changed, the average now saw Luxembourg as the winner and East Flanders as the loser.

Christmas vs. Halloween vs. Easter vs. Thanksgiving vs. Valentine's Day

My yummy Christmas dinner is almost digested ;-) Time to check on the old Yuletide's status in comparison with the other big—esp. in the US—holidays.



As expected, each holiday had its own seasonal peak and Christmas had the biggest one. Second was Halloween: everyone likes to dress up... Easter peaked in March-April (not fixed in the normal sense). Note that Canada's Thanksgiving Day in October was dwarfed by the US one in November. Valentine's Day was last. Let's have a look at the country rankings for each holiday:











The results were more or less as expected. A few observations: Halloween with its Celtic roots was also important in Ireland (no. 3) and even in Belgium (no. 6)—as a Belgian, I have actually no clue why that would be; of course, I haven't lived there in decades. Why Easter registered so heavily in Australia (no.1) and New Zealand (no. 3) was also kind of puzzling. That Thanksgiving registered at all outside the US and Canada might provide further proof of the supersized influence of esp. the US in the world. South African Googlers were the second-most interested in Valentine's.


Photo Copyright j_wijnands, CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Food & Drink Searches in the US, Canada, Germany, Russia, Italy, France, Brazil, Japan and India

Today I looked at Google searches about food and drink collectively by a series of countries. What is more, I used the option to show trend lines for each year which should bring out seasonalities. I started with the US:



The two high points of the year were Thanksgiving (fourth Thursday of November) and Christmas. Next, Canada:



In Canada, Thanksgiving is celebrated on a different date: the second Monday of October. This was reflected in the trend lines. Surely, Christmas will also be the gastronomical top in Germany?



Indeed. Note the more gradual buildup toward Weihnachten though. Also, Easter was becoming more pronounced here. That holiday follows a complicated set of rules involving a lunisolar calendar and fell in the Western rite of Christianity on different dates: April 11, 2004; March 27, 2005; April 16, 2006; April 8, 2007; March 23, 2008. Let's go to a prime representative of the Eastern rite of Christianity: Russia.



Primarily because the Eastern rite doesn't follow the Gregorian calendar but instead still uses the Julian one, their Christmases do not always coincide with the Western ones: April 11, 2004; May 1, 2005; April 23, 2006; April 8, 2007; April 27, 2008. We did see a small increase at that time in 2004, 2007 and 2008 but not in the other years. It seemed like Easter wasn't as big a deal as in the Western rite. Christmas trumped everything. Next, Italy:



This displayed a more "multipolar" seasonality: Christmas and Easter, sure, but also mid-February and more. I guess it goes to show that Italians like to celebrate on many occasions—good for them! How about the other stereotypical bon vivants, France?



Besides Christmas, a peak in mid-August also showed. But more interesting was that the search volume went up dramatically in March 2008 as compared with the previous years. Odd. Off to South America I went to investigate Brazil.



Easter was almost as important as Christmas for Brazilians. I wondered what the mid-June increase stood for. It turns out that June 12 is the Dia dos Namorados, a kind of Valentine's Day. Note the more or less increasing search volume through the years. How about Japan?



Even though this country isn't really much Christian, Yuletide was most noticeable in the seasonal trends. It has become kind of a secular, imported holiday. Second most important was early June which I wasn't able to link to any specific holiday or festivity. Does anybody have an idea? Finally, I did an analysis of India:



I couldn't observe any noticeable seasonal peaks in Google searches for food and drink. However, there was a remarkable peak in September 2007. Maybe this had to do with India winning the inaugural ICC World Twenty20 championship? I really don't know. Maybe somebody can help on this one too.

One more thing: I did a quick tally of the top 3 search terms in the analyzed countries, totaling all the occurrences:



Obviously, most people search the internet for recipes or for restaurants. Sushi occurred in the top 3 only in Russia (not Japan!), wine in Germany (not France!). Ramen though was only popular in Japan.

Anthropology vs. Archaeology vs. Linguistics vs. Art History vs. Musicology

Tonight, a face-off of five academic disciplines which are somewhat related:


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of archaeology | archeo... in all years
anthropology 1.19
archaeology | archeo... 1.00
linguistics 0.64
"art history" 0.43
musicology 0.12

All disciplines displayed lows in the summer and at Christmas while peaking in Fall when university is back in session. Also, they all decreased steadily in Google-popularity. Anthropology beat out arch(a)eology for first place, musicology was dead last but had a surprisingly big peak in early 2004. It turned out that this was related to Prince's Musicology album however... Pretty good album I must agree. I'm not sure what that other peak in the news graph in late 2004 represents. But wait, let's see if we got different results when we zoomed in on specific English-speaking countries. First the US as a benchmark:


Scale is based on the average traffic of archaeology | archeo... from United States in all years
anthropology 1.56
archaeology | archeo... 1.00
linguistics 0.52
"art history" 0.58
musicology 0.10

Anthropology was more ahead in the US than in the world as a whole while linguistics and art history were about even now. Next, the United Kingdom:


Scale is based on the average traffic of archaeology | archeo... from United Kingdom in all years
anthropology 0.43
archaeology | archeo... 1.00
linguistics 0.27
"art history" 0.16
musicology 0.01

In the UK, archaeology was twice as popular as anthropology but declined much faster. In the UK, archaeology is not subsumed under a broader anthropology discipline, unlike in the US. Musicology only registered in Google-popularity for the Prince album in 2004 and then nothing... How about Australia?


Scale is based on the average traffic of archaeology | archeo... from Australia in all years
anthropology 0.42
archaeology | archeo... 1.00
linguistics 0.14
"art history" 0
musicology 0

Here too archaeology was more popular than anthropology. Art history barely registered and musicology not at all: I guess they don't like Prince as much down under? ;-) Lastly, let's check on Canada:


Scale is based on the average traffic of archaeology | archeo... from Canada in all years
anthropology 1.52
archaeology | archeo... 1.00
linguistics 0.46
"art history" 0.38
musicology 0

Well, Canada may still have the Queen as head of state but in in this academic face-off they followed the US and not the British Commonwealth... Creeping Americanization, I guess ;-) Anthropology was again king.

By the way, just like with some of the other face-offs, I am constrained to search terms that don't have too many different meanings lest they distort the graphs. For example, "philosophy" is too often used in a non-academic context. I left "musicology" in this face-off in a way to demonstrate the statistical noise produced by such an ambiguous term.

Hitler vs. Mao vs. Stalin vs. Kublai

I compared the four bloodiest dictators in world history who are estimated to together have caused the death of 160 million people (source: R.J. Rummel). They all date back to the 20th century except for Kublai Khan (13th cent.).


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of mao in all years
hitler 3.00
mao 1.00
stalin 0.60
kublai 0.05

It is amazing how much Hitler still personifies this dubious category even though Mao and Stalin are estimated to have sent respectively four and two times as many people to an early grave. Note the dip in the trend lines around Christmas each year.

Future vs. Past vs. Present

Today, a basic word face-off: past, present and future.


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of past in all years
future 2.04
past 1.00
present 0.62

Unsurprisingly, future is the clear leader, present is the least interesting... Notice the seasonal peaks of future and concurrent valleys of past and present, all at year's end.

Wine vs. Coffee vs. Tea vs. Beer vs. Soda

Today's face-off compares the Google-popularity of the common beverage categories (excluding the unprepared, naturally-available milk and water):


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of wine in all years.
wine 1.46
coffee 1.00
tea 0.90
beer 0.82
soda 0.26

Wine triumphs! Does this mean the US is a top wine consuming nation after all? Of course not: according to US government statistics, Americans for instance consume 11 times more coffee than wine:



Of course, the annual peak of wine consumption at year's end doesn't hurt as is evident in the Google Trends graph.

Huricane vs. Tsunami vs. Earthquake vs. Tornado vs. Typhoon

With hurricane Gustav threatening to wreak havoc in Louisiana (and beyond) as I type this, I thought it might be time to face off natural disasters:


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of tsunami in all years.
hurricane 1.40
tsunami 1.00
earthquake 0.60
tornado 0.40
typhoon 0.20

The calamitous Christmas 2004 tsunami swept all other disasters away... Nevertheless, hurricanes are much more often googled as they are far more common. As expected, they peak around this time of the year as they are a seasonal phenomenon, the most infamous example being hurricane Katrina which hit New Orleans almost exactly three years ago. A 2007-only graph shows a typical annual pattern:


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of tsunami in 2007.
hurricane 2.40
tsunami 1.00
earthquake 1.10
tornado 1.10
typhoon 0.50

Einstein vs. Isaac Newton vs. Charles Darwin vs. Euclid vs. Copernicus

I've compared some of the most influential, revolutionary scientists of all time (Google Trends):


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "isaac newton" in all years.
einstein 5.35
"isaac newton" 1.00
"charles darwin" 0.75
euclid 0.55
copernicus 0.45

Einstein dwarfs everybody else: he is truly the iconic scientist. However, his impact makes it hard to distinguish the other four. Let's look at them separately:


Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of "isaac newton" in all years.
"isaac newton" 1.00
"charles darwin" 0.76
euclid 0.54
copernicus 0.45

Even more pronounced than before, we can spot a seasonal aspect to the Google-interest in science: summertime and Christmas are outspoken "unscientific." The possibility that the interest in science is gradually declining is also more apparent in this graph. Finally, people are more interested in Newton and Darwin, closer to our own cultural framework than Euclid and Copernicus.

Banana vs. Strawberry vs. Pear vs. Pineapple vs. Cranberry

Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of pear in all years.
banana 4.95
strawberry 2.20
pear 1.00
pineapple 0.85
cranberry 0.70

I wanted to compare the common fruits. However, "apple" and "orange" were out because Apple Inc. and the color orange would distort the results too much. So I replaced them by "cranberry" and "strawberry." No big surprise, bananas are the most popular of the group, followed by strawberries. The latter are more seasonal though. Very seasonal then are cranberries as they are associated with esp. Thanksgiving and to a lesser extent with Christmas. I am puzzled by the recent and sudden surge of pineapples: maybe something to do with trade issues?

iPod vs. webcam vs. cell phone

Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of ipod in all years.
ipod 1.00
webcam 0.58
"cell phone" 0.26

A. Apple unveils Mac mini iPod Shuffle
MLive.com - Jan 12 2005
B. Apple unveils iPod nano; cell phone iPod
Reuters.uk - Sep 8 2005
C. Apple Video iPod
KVOA.com - Oct 12 2005
D. Apple Launches New iPod, iPod nano & iPod shuffle
IT News Online - Sep 13 2006
E. A new iPod accessory
KVIA - Jan 9 2007
F. Apple Unloads New iPod Nano, iPod Classic, iPod Touch
Mobilemag.com - Sep 6 2007


Popularity of the above-mentioned search terms in Google (relative) and Google News (absolute). Notice the peaks during the annual mad buying season of Christmas. The other highs of the iPod are easy to explain: times when new models were introduced. See About Google Trends for an explanation of the methodology.

Source: Google Trends