And, to compound the stress, a new survey conducted by gifting website www.ijustloveit.co.uk has found that, these days, it's less about the quality time and more about the quality present.
The survey was taken by 2,000 people in the UK - 1,020 women and 980 men. The age range was between 18 – 55+.
I'm sure there's a hefty amount of buying for kids by parents who are dealing with guilt at their long working hours. Or spending on relatives we've avoided visiting because Facebook is so much easier - and cheaper!
But the irony is that many of those gifts we are feverishly pursuing won't be wanted anyway.
A whopping 60% of those surveyed said that they had received an unwanted gift at Christmas.
Over 50% chose to give their unwanted gifts away and 25% chose to sell their gifts
Over 40% of those surveyed are currently buying for 6-10 people, so potentially at least half will give their gifts away.
It also showed that men are less concerned with the quality of their gifts than women, with more men choosing to keep hold of ‘unwanted’ gifts, whereas women wanted to get rid of them.
When it comes to receiving unwanted gifts, 50% of men would prefer to either keep them compared to 40% of women, with over 60% of women giving them away, compared to only 40% of men.
If you are thinking of gifts to buy this year, the survey also showed that the ‘popular’ Selfie Stick was voted one of the worst Christmas gifts to receive by both men and women, with 40% of the total vote.
Other survey results include:
The highest percentage of people, at almost 40% of the vote, prefer buying for children compared to any other relative or friend, and only 0.45% of people look forward to buying for their grandparents.
Over 10% of people enjoy buying for mothers; while only 1% of people enjoy buying for their fathers. People would rather buy for their pets at 1.40% than their dads! Over 35% of those asked most look forward to receiving gifts from their partners, with grandparents once again receiving one of the lowest votes of only 0.45%
Comparing mother to father again, over 10% look forward to receiving a gift from their mum, and a measly 2% from their dads.
In total, over 40% of those asked said they would spend between £100 - £300 on Christmas gifts. That’s nearly 50% less than data acquired in 2015.
Which rather begs the question - where are all these 'quality presents' going to come from?
Somehow stocking up in the January sales seems like a very good idea. And there's always Ebay.
