IStock Photo 7000764 © YinYang
Holiday buying starts with the list of those who will receive gifts: the immediate family, maybe a favorite aunt or uncle, nephews and nieces. Cousin so-and-so, who’s all alone now. Oh, and friends and neighbors, coworkers, mail carriers, teachers, and so on. American adults each plan to give an average of 18.2 gifts this year, down from 21.5 last year and 23.1 the year before.
This year, Americans will spend an average of $676 on holiday gifts and gift cards. Last year, when the dangers of the economy were perhaps most visible, 1 in 4.17 adults planned to spend between $500 and $999 on Christmas gifts.
Given the length of those lists—and the size of the credit card bills that come due in January—you’d never know that 1 in 5.56 Americans consider buying and shopping to be the least enjoyable part of the season.
Nor would you be able to tell from the gifts themselves. In an August 2009 poll of 1,000 US households, more than 75% of respondents reported they were willing to splurge on a holiday gift in the upcoming season no matter what their financial difficulties.
It hasn’t always been this way. Exchanging Hanukkah gifts wasn’t common until the start of the 20th century, when Eastern European Jewish immigrants adopted then-mainstream gifts associated with Christmas. But even exchanging Christmas gifts wasn’t widely practiced until the mid-to-late 19th century. Advertisements didn’t commonly feature the phrase “Christmas gifts” until around 1870, nearly 30 years after the first publication of A Christmas Carol. Before the Civil War, extra money spent on Christmas went to food and drink.
Today, feasting is just the beginning. 1 in 3.85 adults planned to give food or liquor for the holidays in 2008. Eager to give recipients the power of choice, 1 in 1.52 (66%) adults planned to give a gift certificate or gift card. In 2009, gift cards are expected to be the top gift for the sixth year in a row.
Still, there are some limits that financial circumstances have wrought. Some 36% of adults plan on giving more “practical” (gift certificates for movies and manicures fall into this category) gifts this year, and nearly 17% plan on giving something homemade.
Although about 75% of holiday budgets are allocated for gifts, there is other holiday spending, too. A Deloitte report on holiday spending suggests that consumers are willing to increase their 2009 spending on socializing, entertaining, non-gift clothing, and home-holiday decorations. People are willing to let the recession take away a few presents, but not the fun of a holiday bash.
These attitudes parallel the feelings from last year’s holiday season. In a poll that asked why people spent less on Christmas in 2008, “less Christmas spirit” was citied by a mere 3% (124 votes), compared to the most popular response, “fear of the future,” by 31% (1,521 votes). Financial caution apparently doesn’t mean any less holiday enthusiasm.
In fact, Americans’ unbounded holiday generosity does not only extend to the people they know, but to total strangers—like the employees of credit card companies and their shareholders. How else to explain the $15 billion that Americans pay every year in credit card penalty fees?