Christmas Spending

Australians apparently spent $27.3 billion on everything from presents to piña coladas this festive season. That's equivalent to a 14% increase compared to last year's estimated $23.9 billion spend. The average Aussie is expected to spend $1,361 this Christmas on presents, food, alcohol, eating out and travel.

These are massive figures. Behind all of this sits some assumptions that we ought to question.

1. You communicate that you love someone by giving gifts. Sure, gift giving is a love language – but there are others. According to Gary Chapman, you could also tell others you love them by words of affirmation, acts of service, quality time, and physical touch.

2. That gifts will make us happier. Something like $1 billion of the gifts purchased are unwanted. Many will break, clutter, go out of fashion, or be superseded. The correlation between national happiness and the amount spent on gifts is not very high.

3. That there are gifts that we need. Again, some of us have real needs and gifts can be a way of providing and supporting others. But many in the West have more stuff than they will ever need in a lifetime, and we don’t need more.

4. That giving is good for the nation because it’s good for the economy. Simplistically speaking, there is truth to this. But many of the gifts purchased will be imported good (toys, clothes, technology). There are more effective and sustainable ways to support the economy than buying gifts.

As a family, we have been pairing back gift buying. The last few years we gave and received one gift each. This year we gave none. No doubt this will change as my grandchildren grow older. Bigger does not always mean better.