How much did Christmas cost you?

[Sam9769]

With all the people you had to buy presents for and the general festivities over Christmas, how much do you reckon it cost and what would you say is the average cost of a Christmas present for a teenager?

Between food, alcohol, gifts, decor and activities, about £5k. One of my children had a very expensive gift this year though so usually it would be less.

I have given some of my spare Xmas biscuits to a food bank.

About £3k I think. Presents, hosting, all the food, theatre tickets, panto, light trail etc. Particularly expensive year. Worth it though and would have scaled back if we couldn’t afford it.

About 5k 😵 We'll be paying it off for a while but after a tough year it was worth it. It'll be no spend Jan /Feb/March now 😅

About £3,000 all in which is ridiculous so I'm planning on halving it for next Christmas and the money saved I'm determined to use for a holiday at Easter.

About £2k (food, presents, panto). Don’t really drink so no booze purchased.

Probably about 5k but it was all paid, we don’t have credit cards. It’s absolutely ridiculous but we have a big family.

£3k but we were hosting.

Also, we are still enjoying some of the extras like special cheese and wine.

£1100 presents
£250 food & drinks
£50 on a pre-Christmas afternoon out
£100 on a Christmas day.out
£500 on a lovely new tree and decorations

So pretty much bang on £2,000

200 plus a bit more food

Including presents for each other, children, family, Panto, dinners out with friends, theatre as a one off, etc we spent £4500 and I feel sick thinking about it tbh

£1700 all in which seems a bit mad now I've actually written it down, especially considering we went to ILs for Christmas dinner so only hosted a few people on Boxing Day, have 1 dc and didn't didn't do many paid for Christmas things! Will cut it down for this year I think.

900 presents
500 on food
150 Christmas days out (for both kid friendly family stuff and one thing for me)
50 on craft stuff and bits for the house
100 on Christmas PJs and clothes for LO

£2700 for all gifts and food etc. Most of that was one large monetary gift to DS. We didn't host.

Around £2,500-£3,000.
No debt and gifts and food bought from around September. We aren't drinkers, so alcohol cost was minimal (a couple of cases of lagers). We had spirits and wines, including champagne already.
I take advantage of sales (Black Friday) and buy fresh meats when they're on offer and freeze in our industrial sized chest freezer.
I still spend on adult 3DC like when they were younger. I give their partners around £100 (in Euros) then smaller gifts. This year I spent the most (around £400) on GD, which included several outfits.
We had 7 (12 total) guests for Christmas Day.

Gifts: Around £800 I suspect (not sure exactly how much DH spent on the bits he bought, so adding that estimate to my spend). This is for 2 DCs, 8 nieces & nephews, some bits to me/DH from each other and a few smaller gifts for others.

Food & drinks: ~£500 from Xmas eve to NYE over and above our usual spend. This wasn't really noticeable though as I start putting things away from Sept and the last weekly shop before Xmas was a fair bit lower than normal as a result (it was mostly fruit, veg and basic staples)

Panto: £150 tickets, plus probably another £50 on drinks before and during the performance.

Decorations: £250. An expensive year as both our tree and outside lights needed to be replaced. The last tree lasted 15 years and we usually get a few years out of the lights (depending on how gently DH takes them down!), so I wouldn't expect this in a normal year.

Total: ~£1750. Not too bad given the one-off costs and week-long special meals, hosting and outings.

This year I spent about £400-450 on food and drink for 12. Maybe £800-1000 on presents and £200 on December the 1st stuff for my 17yo dd and 4 dgs. Pyjamas, slippers, craft kits, mugs, hot chocolate , marshmallows and squirty cream etc

next year I’m adamant I’m reducing it ALL down to a more affordable point. Already bought my dgs pjs and slippers in the sale for 1/4 of what I spent this year. Going to pick up a cheap game every month or two as they loved hungry hippos so that’s going to help spread the cost a bit. And I’ve had a gastric bypass earlier this year so all that money I spent on food and I got to enjoy about 1kg of it over the entire festive period. So definitely reining it in next year

I have a 11 and 8 year old gc. I spend around £100 on each. I also pay for the panto and soft play/bounce parties. Their great/Aunts give around £50 each. One close Aunty soends £200 per child. My DD averages £500 each, for each Birthday and Christmas. It depends on what's needed, if a new Ipad etc then more. So a budget of around £3k for Birthday/Christmas/Easter (for two primary children). But a £5k budget for family holidays. She always misses two days of school. We help out with holiday expenses.
There's only two of us at home. All in we spent around £800. We don't do adult presents.

God lots of these totals are surprising me. I run a very tight Xmas budget of c. €1,200 all in for presents/ tree/ experiences/ food/ clothes and I think that's too much! I buy presents as the year goes on when I see bargains. I've already got my cards/ wrap etc in the sales for next yr.

I'd prefer to keep Xmas more restrained and blow the budget on our holidays (3 overseas planned this yr!)

All in about £3.2K that’s gifts, food, drink (we hosted this year 12 on Xmas day) panto tickets, works Christmas do and New Year’s Eve boozy lunch. We put away £230 a month toward Christmas but gutted how much extra it cost this year compared to last. Had a lovely time but need to pull back a little next year. Lots of booze, chocolate and crackers left but I can’t stand the sight of them now.

No idea.

This year we went to Lapland which was around £8k in total including the presents we took with us.

Most years it's around £1.5k.

£300- Food & Drink
£400- Gifts for children
£200- Gifts for each other
£400- Experiences (theatre, light shows, santa visits etc.)
£200- Family and friends gifts

We went away so a lot, about £8k

Accommodation and travel was £3k
Eating out was £2.5k
Presents were about £2k
Food at home when we got back was about £500

I don't even want to add it all up but I enjoyed Xmas and so did my family.

Around £2K… £600 for food. £300 on each of my children (2 adults); the rest on days out, lunching out & alcohol. Hubby and I spent around £150 on each other. Next year I’ll be clamping down on the food. We got lots of party food ‘just in case’ & we’re still munching through it.