With Christmas and New Year’s right around the corner, the yearly craze for buying hundreds of dollars worth of new, fantastic gifts for everyone you know is just about reaching it’s end. One for the boss, a couple for the kids, something special for you and your best friend… the shopping list goes on and on. Now multiply that times an average of 80 or so Christmases each North American consumer will have celebrated throughout their life, and let’s say about 470 million people celebrating the “season of giving”, purchasing an average of 10 gifts costing $40 each.

If we crunch the numbers, that is…

  • At least 800 holiday gifts purchased and received by each person throughout their lives, exchanging a minimum of $32,000 per person (likely much higher if that person is more wealthy).
  • At least $188 billion dollars is spent each year on Christmas presents in North America. That is 31 times the total annual budget of the United Nations, at around $6 billion dollars.

Shocking, isn’t it…

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not against Christmas shopping or buying presents for people. It is fun and exciting, not to mention socially expected that you buy people gifts at this time of year. And there is nothing wrong with that.

But when you consider the sheer cost and number of those billions of items each year, not to mention the resources that went into producing, packaging, transporting, retailing, and distributing them, doesn’t it annoy you that most of these items are probably completely useless things that people already have more than enough of (i.e. mugs, soap, candles), or will get bored of by the end of January (i.e. kid’s toys, video games)?

I found this article as I was searching for some background to my statistics, and it’s really quite interesting to see how powerful Christmas is as a social force. I don’t want to say that I don’t like getting presents. Everyone does. But when I open a bag to see a box of chocolates, tea, or an iTunes gift card, I just feel disappointed. Not because it’s not an expensive or fancy gift. It can be the biggest box of hand-crafted Belgian chocolate ever made, or the most valuable gift card that Apple can offer, but I just feel like the person didn’t care about me enough to know that I was lactose intolerant, or didn’t have an iPhone. (I’m not lactose intolerant, by the way).

So, I say “DOWN WITH THE STUPID GIFTS”. If someone is important enough to deserve a gift from you, make it one that is unique or useful to them. Take the time to pay attention to the little things that people appreciate. Impress them with the thought behind it, rather than the price.

That’s my little rant for today! Happy Holidays, everybody!