Edit: I know the start of the title is supossed to be ”is getting” or ”are”, I just realized that mistake when I already submitted this post
Maybe I just differ I haven’t done a poll or anything but like
Yesterday, I was watching an American YouTuber and she said
”We didn’t grow up poor like, I still got Wii for Christmas”
And that just had me thinking again how I have always seen these Americans online talk about how they got for example a Wii, or a PlayStation, or a new phone for Christmas
And idk that’s just been strange to me because my more expensive gifts, like my 3DS, my PlayStation, my Wii U, my Switch, were all birthday presents
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I always got bigger presents on Christmas. Of it was a video games console, it was usually the only thing I got, but I never got something that big for my birthday.
In the US there is no set occasion for more expensive presents. Some families give them on Christmas, some on birthdays.
I’d encourage you to ask other Europeans, I bet this is far from exclusive to the US.
Christmas is generally bigger than a person’s birthday.
Varies a lot by family (and income level). I got my daughter a car for Christmas, so I would say I’m in the “big gifts for Christmas” category
I’d say it’s common to get bigger gifts on birthdays or Christmas.
Some families also don’t do that and just do smaller gifts. Either is normal.
Christmas always felt like a time to indulge a bit in my family.
Definitely not a one-size-fits-all answer. Some people spend. Some do not.
I’ve never gotten anything big for my birthday. I’ve never gotten anything super decadent for Christmas, either, because that is not how my family rolls, but the more expensive gifts were usually for Christmas.
We grew up poor and my parents still made sure my sister and I got a highly coveted gift. A gaming system, a toy, something we really wanted. Which tended to be something more expensive.
My birthday is 12 days before Christmas, so it’s not long to wait, but I almost always get bigger gifts for Christmas. Certainly more gifts. The only exception is a “big” birthday — 16, 18, 21, 30, 40, 50 are the ones I’ve had so far. (And 1 year old, but I don’t recall what I got as a gift, unsurprisingly.)
For me, who did grow up poor, things like game consoles were Christmas gifts because they’d be joint gifts for everyone. $500 on a console and a couple games would be way out of budget for a birthday or any one child.
ETA: there are also Black Friday sales that make big gifts significantly cheaper at Christmas time. That makes it much easier to get gifts for Christmas than for a random Tuesday in Spring.
More often than not if a child wants an expensive toy,game, etc a parent will get it for Christmas or their birthday.
When I was growing up and wanted a new game console I knew I had to somehow get the money doing small jobs around the house or area (like cutting lawns for neighbors, etc) or just wait till Christmas and I would get it as that one gift for the year.
If my parents wanted to get me a random gift for some smaller occasion, it definitely wouldn’t be a video game or system to use that example again.
My brother and I had January birthdays. With the holiday season and when stuff could be bought, Christmas was just bigger. Even by age 6, my mom was asking me what gifts for Christmas and what could be pushed a few weeks later. I could see a summer or autumn birthday getting more.
The US is an extremely diverse and huge nation. It really depends on the specific family. Are there a lot of families who get expensive gifts on Christmas? Yes. Are there a lot of families who do not? Yes.
My overall impression is many people get and give more expensive gifts on Christmas. That was certainly true in my family, and it’s very common to see comments like you referenced. The general stat is most consumer spending during the year is during the holiday season, and the majority of that spending, 60-70%, is on Christmas gifts. But it’s a big country and there are many individual exceptions.
My parents literally started Christmas shopping in the summer. They hid all our gifts at my uncle’s house so we couldn’t find them and ruin the surprise. We’d usually get 1 or 2 really big gifts like a TV or a game system, some smaller fun gifts, and some practical gifts like an alarm clock and a few outfits.
In contrast, my birthday was usually celebrated with one big gift like jewelry and the meal of my choice.
In our family Christmas was always the bigger gift giving time. Birthdays were a party or a trip to the lake and some small gifts.
I feel like people get expensive gifts on their birthday and Christmas. It depends on your money situation, but for sure Christmas is the big gift season for a lot of people. I think birthdays you just get a lot of individual birthday presents which COULD be expensive (like a car if you’re turning 18) especially if you have a partner that wants to do something special for you…which could also happen on Christmas lol
I would say that Christmas is the holiday in the US that the biggest gifts are given, when contrasted with other holidays at least. It’s probably comparable to what you might give someone on their birthday.
That being said, it depends on the family or friends.
Our culture pushes bigger gifts because it’s very consumer driven, so advertising for Christmas shopping is intense over here, which naturally leads to more or “bigger” things being bought.
Personally, I wish it was less materialistic because my favorite things about Christmas can’t be bought, but it is what it is. I’ve benefited from great Christmas gifts, so I can’t complain too much.
Yes. There are two factors at play:
Black Friday. There’s a tradition of steep discounts right before December, making expensive gifts a lot more affordable
Bonuses tend to hit around in December or January, so middle class consumers tend to have a bit more money available around this time of year, or might be more willing to dip into savings in the expectation of receiving a large chunk of money soon.
I got expensive gifts on Christmas as a kid. We were slightly upper middle class if that makes sense. My dad loved making Christmas special and getting us great gifts. Think Clark Griswald in Christmas vacation.
This is NOT universal for all families. Incomes vary wildly across the country. Plenty of families don’t do extravagant gifts, either because of finances or that’s just how they are.
As an adult I don’t have children but my husband and I aren’t big gift givers with each other for any occasion. We’d rather spend our money on experiences we go to a lot of concerts together, even traveling to other countries to see the bands we like. We also love eating at interesting, often high end restaurants. But I have no desire for stuff like diamond jewelry or designer clothes. I’d rather have the experiences.
Something like a Wii is often a family gift rather than individual and those are better suited to Christmas. The gifts that you intend to be shared are gonna be more expensive
Yes Christmas is when I’d get the big thing I wanted and/or needed for the year. New phone, new computer, whatever it was for that year. It wasn’t always something huge, but if there was a big thing it would be Christmas.
I would get a video game and one other thing for my birthday and that was it.
Christmas was where I got the big gifts, and multiple other presents.
For me Christmas was the ‘bigger’ holiday for presents because Christmas is basically one of the few times a year the whole family gets together due to people living in different parts of the country. My relatives weren’t going to fly out for a kid’s birthday so they would mail money. If I lived in the Netherlands, I could honestly see a life where I’d visit family a lot more often.
If you’re going to get an expensive gift then it’s gonna happen on Christmas rather than any other day
Everyone celebrates dofferently, if they celebrate at all. In my family we only give gifts to the kids. Although yes, they tend to be pretty nice ones. The whole family doesn’t get together for birthdays for one thing and that’s really the only other celebration with gifts involved.
A lot of people save up and buy special (big or expensive) presents for Christmas. Obviously, there are a lot of varying factors at play. As a kid, we were very poor and my parents would save all year to buy us Christmas gifts. There would also be one big “family” gift that was more expensive than the others and we were supposed to share.
It depends on individual families. I aim for spend $300 per kid for Christmas, though I’m sure that will got a lot more expensive this year,
Honestly, I did grow up poor, so we didn’t really get overly expensive gifts period. But I can’t really recall a hige difference between the money value of my gifts for Christmas vs my birthday. I think it was more dependent on the finances of the tear than which celebration it was.
I grew up with siblings so those big Christmas gifts weren’t to any one person, they were shared by all of us, so it would’ve been a bit more odd to give them as a birthday gift.
Depends entirely on the family but Christmas gifts are generally important. Some families will put nicer gifts on credit, some set aside a little money throughout the year, and some like mine, typically don’t buy extravagant gifts if any at all. For the adults it’s more about the congregation and food!
But for small children, all bets are off. That is a competitive sport in my family. We see whose gifts the littlest play with the longest. And I will tell you, we have been holding that competition since the early’90s. 9.8 times, the winning toy will be the cheapest. The most recent victor was, ahem, myself. And the winning toy was a $4 “microphone.” A mic-shaped plastic cylinder with a spring inside that produced a small vocal reverberation when spoken into.
So I think it depends.
For me birthday gifts are bigger. Mostly just because at Christmas there are more people I need to get gifts for. For their birthdays it’s only them so it’s easier to splurge.
Our fam definitely does bigger presents on Xmas vs birthdays. It’s kinda weird bc we aren’t religious or anything. I guess it’s just bc so many people do it here lol 😆
A lot of the bigger presents were Christmas presents because it was as much for the whole family as anything else.
When “I” got a PS2, it was mine, but also my family’s first DVD player and other family members used it.
I have teenagers. Yes Christmas is the big gift. Even when they were little kids, Santa gave them small stuff, but the big gift always has “Love Mom and Dad”.
When I was growing up it was the same for me.
Alternatively, we always had a nice event for their birthdays. Bowling party, bounce house, minigolf, laser tag, etc. So the money got spent on the event, and their friends gave them gifts. We’d give them something small then.
Yes typically
I don’t know if it’s an American thing, but at least with my family the bigger/most expensive presents usually happened on Christmas. That’s the time for when most people in my family go the little extra mile.
We got bigger gifts on Christmas because my parents could get things like game systems or like big things like a trampoline etc and have it be for both my sister and me. A split gift. So instead of spending several hundred dollars on one of us they could get it for both of us. And we would be sharing it anyway so it didn’t make sense to get it for a birthday if the other would be using it just as much.
Over here, the time between Thanksgiving (4th Thursday of November) and Christmas hold a lot of sales that make those bigger purchases easier to afford than most of the rest of the year.
Usually in my family, if there was a large gift it was for everyone. But we’d also get lots of smaller gifts.
Hmm. This made me think.
When I was growing up, I think my “expensive” gifts were split between Christmas and my birthday in the summer.
But my twins have a birthday close to Christmas, and we’ve always loaded up presents on Christmas and given a small gift and some cash on their birthday.
It varies but I think Christmas has always been when people I know have gotten bigger stuff though I could definitely see that varying depending on the family or people. I think it can also work from a sibling standpoint where all of you get your big stuff on the same day so no one is left jealous because they got the cool new thing that just came out and you have to wait 6 months.
There’s also a lot of sales around black Friday or just the holiday season that can help make things a bit more reasonable. Some jobs do get either a Christmas bonus or overtime during the season that can make paying for it a bit easier.
Having 3 siblings, game consoles and bigger presents like that were more of a Christmas thing but that was because we shared them.
Always bigger gifts at Christmas.
Christmas is generally the “big gift” time for us. It’s what we grew up with. Like birthday we would get some clothes, a toy or two but like $20 toys not $100 toys.
Meanwhile at Christmas it was a huge deal that I got a tv one year.
My kids have birthdays semi close to Christmas so I kinda end up shopping for both at the same time and dividing it up between both events.
not every family does it that way, but i’d say big gifts are pretty popular or or at least ingrained in the culture. there’s some amount of pressure to give kids a big gift. the barbie dreamhouse is probably the quintessential classic manifestation of it, and it’s almost a trope at this point in media to have lower income families in christmas tv episodes of movies worrying about not providing the big, exciting gifts
On average in our family, Christmas skews higher than birthday in terms of larger gift spending but it depends what is going on in their lives. Our kids are mostly older (16, 22, 28) so gifts look a lot different now than 10 years ago. The middle kid, still in college, got a MacBook for his bday because his bday happens to fall right at the time school starts. Once they get to be teens, gifts are more about more expensive needs than just wants. But overall we aren’t huge gift buyers. We spend maybe $1800 on Christmas, total, for all friends and family gifts. We have 3 kids, siblings, parents…so we aren’t spending that much per-person. Often, each year, there is someone who has a larger need, so they might get a more expensive gift compared to the others, but then the next year someone else needs something more expensive, and so on. When they were little, we tried to keep things pretty even gift-to-gift, but now that they are older, their needs vary and we look at the gift equality more long-term.
My birthday was in the summer, so I got the summer things for my birthday and winter things for Christmas, but other than normal clothes, every major thing I got as a kid was either for my birthday or for Christmas.
It really depends on your family size and economic status.
I only have one kid- if I had a couple of kids, it would make more sense to do bigger gifts on birthdays and smaller gifts on Christmas to spread the cost a bit.
Additionally, sometimes bigger gifts are shared gifts. I know often a gaming system is shared in a family, so you give it on Christmas as a family gift.
In my family you were likely to get one big gift on your birthday with nothing else, and several small-to-medium gifts on Christmas, plus one big family gift. But it varied from year to year depending on the family dynamics and age/stage/interests of the kids.
Yes.
It’s not exclusively American. The end of the year is when a lot of new electronics and games come out. Along with end of year bonuses from work. It works out that the closest holiday for both of these is utilized.
I guess it tended to be in Christmas for the more expensive stuff. But my birthday is 2 weeks after Christmas so it didn’t matter. “Bigger” birthdays like turning certain ages (like turning a teenager) maybe it was on my birthday.
My father and grandfather grew tobacco together so that they could afford a big Christmas for all the kids in the family.
Not just Americans, Canadians do the same thing.
Yeah both for me growing up and for my kids, Christmas was when we got/gave the biggest gifts. For birthdays, it was usually a small party with a few friends or an experience they’d been wanting to do (escape room, short ski trip, amusement park) and a small gift.
Usually bigger presents on Christmas (phone, game console, etc) and one solid thing for my birthday (video game, movie, book, piece of sports equipment, etc) when I was growing up
I don’t know if it is only an American thing.
We’ve done big Christmases, small Christmases, and everything in between.
My kids are nearly grown and they have their preferences. My eldest daughter wants small but expensive items like nice purses and expensive perfume. My step son likes lots of cheap things. My son would prefer one single large gift and he’s okay with it being combined with his presents being combined with his birthday gift.
Personally, my birthday is early enough in January that sometimes I wasn’t even back in school from Christmas break. My mom has said that she did make a conscious effort to make sure that I still got to have a birthday, which she did succeed with dinner and cake, but the presents really always felt like second smaller Christmas. Which really didn’t ever bother me, it was (and still is) a nice little cap on the holiday season that gives me a nice transition point for going back to school/work
Growing up my brother and I rarely got really expensive gifts for either Christmas or birthdays. But when we got a really expensive thing that could be shared, it came at Christmas becausethat was when shared gifts made sense.
We did that with our kids. And Christmasis when we got them gifts that they both would receive like bicycles. Now they’re grown up, Christmas is when we give them large checks to save for houses, school, retirement etc.
No. I know I can do better at planning, some of my family starts buying presents in September to space out the pain, but I suck at that. My dad’s birthday is in August, I’m not turning around and thinking what to buy him 4 months later after that, and what if they suddenly get a new hobby, or fall out of love with their current hobby. So I save all my gift shopping until last minute and that’s the time of year my dollar is the shortest.
Huh, I’d never thought about it before. But yes, bigger presents for Christmas than birthdays is the norm
My budget for my kids when they were little was: $75 for birthday and $150 for Christmas.
Yes, Christmas gifts have always been bigger than birthday ones in my family.
I would guess “fairness” has something to do with it in families with multiple children- if one kid gets a large gift on their birthday when their siblings get nothing, there is more likely to be tension over it (especially for kids who are too little to understand that birthdays all average out over the course of a year- they just know that today they didn’t get the big gift their sibling got). On Christmas, everybody gets either a really big shared present (like a game console for the whole family) or equivalent large individual presents at the same time. Like last year my kids each got an electronic device they had wanted- different devices per their requests, but all about the same cost, and no strife because everybody got one at one time, vs giving them on birthdays and have some kids with and some without for several months.
I tend to go bigger for Christmas than birthdays. My husband thinks the reverse.
We got one big present at birthdays and Christmas, and then some smaller stuff like books and clothes. Sometimes the big present was shared with siblings like when we got a Nintendo or our home computer
There isn’t really any uniform answer. It changes a lot based on family. Some don’t really do any big gifts. Some do big gifts for everything. Some do them for Christmas and some for birthdays.
For my family, Christmas was usually the bigger gift event. Birthday’s typically are fairly low value. Like today I’ll get $25-$50 gifts for my birthday from family members. For Christmas my mother got me a $180 chef knife, among other things.
However the most expensive gift I ever got was a birthday gift. For my 15th birthday my mother got me a car. Granted it wasn’t a super nice or high end car. It was a 15 year old Chevy Monte Carlo, a forth generation SS model. Really wish I still had that car honestly it would be a great project car today. She bought it off a friends mother who couldn’t drive anymore and it had been sitting a while. It was in fairly good shape but she gave it to me at 15 so my grandfather and I could work on it over the next year until I got my license.
I feel that for my family, it was the reverse: bigger presents on birthdays. While Christmas did sometimes mean a big present, it was usually something that was shared by my three siblings and I (e.g. the NES) or the whole family.
Seemed to make sense to me: for Christmas you have to buy for a whole lot of people, so your budget can allow for only so much per person (spending more for people who are closer, of course). But on a person’s birthday, that’s the only person you’ll need to focus on.
It obviously varies a lot – but generally speaking, as an American who has lived on both American coasts and in middle America – they seem to usually be rough equivalents. I haven’t experienced a clear indication that children receive “bigger” or “more expensive” gifts at Christmas relative to their birthday. But I have generally seen that kids to receive more than one gift at Christmas versus maybe one at their birthday. Part of this is because of the Santa Clause story.
I’d say generally yes. I know a lot of people who got only big stuff on Christmas. Personally I tended to get bigger things on my birthday more often then Christmas. Just depended on the year for me growing up.
Depends if the family is rich but yeah during Christmas time is when you see the bigger presents come out to play. I’ll never forget when I got a gaming pc for Christmas a couple of years ago.
I can’t tell you if it’s an American thing or not. I can only tell you my experience as an American. Yes, Christmas gift is always the big expensive gift for everybody I know no exceptions
I think one big reason is you can buy a Christmas present for multiple children. So getting one big thing that is usually out of the family budget, like a wii, because it is for multiple kids becomes more doable.
It’s easier to justify buying a Wii for Christmas because you can legitimately gift it to multiple kids while birthdays are really for one person unless you have twins+.
Yes we are a very heavy consumer country with a, we will put it on credit and deal with it later mentality
The Wii was the budget console that generation.
The thing about video game consoles, for those not into gaming, is they only come every 4-6ish years. So you don’t often get multiple years in a row with gaming consoles. You get one one year, and that’s your big and often only gift. Then subsequent years you get a game or controller or whatever.
I don’t think there’s a single answer for this, it just depends on the family. I wouldn’t say that either necessarily gets bigger presents than the other
USA and UK Christmas is usually bigger for presents. New Zealand, and most of Europe, birthday is bigger for presents
Christmas was pretty much the only time aside from my birthday that I got any kind of toy or gift I know there’s a lot of kids who would get “because you came to the store with me” toys but I never got those.. idk if it’s an American thing or not tho
Our family indulged a bit for Christmas…we got bigger priced items then, along with things we needed like a new coat, or a new outfit or special shoes like expensive boots, laptop computers or gaming systems…and socks! 😆
For birthdays, I always get cash and smaller gifts.
Yes, very much so. There’s a bunch of reasons that reinforce each other: Employers paying Christmas bonuses, The marketing plans of manufacturers and retailers revolving around Christmas gift giving so the big new products are timed to be given as Christmas gifts, retailers often offer steep discounts sometimes very steep discounts on a “loss leader” to drive all that shopping traffic to their stores, and the biggest gifts are often for the whole family rather than for just one child. The game console especially is often bought as a gift for all the children in the family not just for one kid.
Gifts were much more related to Christmas than birthdays which meant bigger items were generally for Christmas.
I think this is a family thing and not an American thing
Definitely got the bigger stuff at Christmas because they were usually joint gifts with my siblings
Yes, in my experience. My parents weren’t well off but Christmas was always multiple gifts and birthdays were a dinner out or hosting a party with friends and cake, and maybe a small gift.
it depended on the family member for me.
my parents put more of an emphasis on christmas presents (they’d budget ~$500 per kid for christmas, birthday usually about $100).
most grandparents did the same for christmas/birthday. though i had one grandmother that said there was nothing special about being born and would give me $5 for my birthday every year versus the $100 she’d give me on christmas lol
I always got way better stuff on Christmas compared to my B-day in April
The release of new consoles usually happens in late fall or early winter. They are designed to cause a Christmas rush.
When is your birthday?
This is going to be very situation specific, too. I think it’s weird that you sequester new consoles to only be birthday gifts for everyone, and that it should be unusual at all to get them for Christmas. No way this is exclusive to the US – Nintendo and Sony aren’t even American companies.
I think my family was a little different. As a kid, I didn’t really get birthday presents (definitely rarer than Christmas presents) and then I stop getting Christmas presents around 12.
Yeah Christmas was where all my big gifts came from. Birthday, Easter were all less expensive gifts.
I usually got a more expensive items for Christmas but not something like game systems. Those would have been a gift for the whole family not one kid. I think because my parents would save up for Christmas gifts or there would be sales around that time they might have gotten more expensive items. For my birthday I would get things like clothes, books. The biggest birthday gift was probably a bike one year.
My son is 30 but when he was growing up I gave him larger gifts for Christmas from Santa. Mind you, not “car big” but bigger than some may have been able to afford.
That said, now that I look back on it I wish I would have handled this differently. If I was to do it over, I would give him the larger gifts from me and smaller from Santa. At the time it didn’t occur to me how this may be for kids he went to school with whose parents couldn’t afford much. It would also have made him realize that asking for a laptop when he was 7 was not something Mom could afford (nor did he need at that age.)
Now that he’s an adult I get him a few smaller gifts and a cash gift to put towards what he needs/wants. For us, Christmas has always been larger gifts than birthdays.
I grew up poor, and my parents tried their best to spoil us on Christmas. Now I make a decent amount, and my wife and I spoil each other. You can call it materialistic. That’s fine. As long as we are enjoying it and happy spending time together.
Birthdays were more of a party. All you need is a birthday cake, cousins, and a sleepover to have tons of fun.
It’s okay to enjoy holidays in multiple ways. It’s okay to enjoy gifts while also enjoy family while also remembering the life of Christ (if you are into that). And also , you don’t have to be into religion at all to celebrate Christmas. It’s a cultural holiday as well as a religious holiday.
My birthday is in January so I always got bigger presents for Christmas. I didn’t always get super expensive gifts but I did get a Nintendo 64 and a GameCube as Christmas presents over the years.
I got (and give my kids) expensive presents on both holidays, but they get more gifts in Christmas.
Christmas is generally bigger than birthday, I think. At least in my family and how I see my siblings interact with their kids.
When I was a kid, my parents would generally have a concept of how much they’d spend on each kid. And so the number of presents could vary.
I’m older but when I was a kid, we might also get a gift that was more for the house, like a game console.
This has always been my experience with family growing up. Parents got us the big gifts for Christmas. For our birthdays, we got to choose where we went to eat out for dinner (we didn’t get a party after the age of 10 or so, but got to invite a friend or two over to have cake.)
My partner and I will choose either Christmas, birthday, or some sort of anniversary for a “expensive gift,” but it’s usually one and not the others. One year I got her a switch for her birthday. This past Christmas she got me a PS5. She booked a trip to Universal Orlando for one of our anniversaries a few years ago (we saved up for the travel expenses and food expenses together after the trip was presented to me.) I’d choose a trip over a material good any day, but we usually plan those together now instead of surprising each other 😂
We always got the big presents at Christmas, and a lot of the time that’s because they were for the family to share.
If we got a Wii it could only have been Christmas, and it would have been a gift to the whole family not to one kid.
In our family the expensive gifts are not every year. I do know people that go all out every year. I grew up where usually we chose an item under $10 from Meijer (a regional department store with grocery chain) and I always had to wrap them in newspaper though both my bro and I knew what we’d get. Usually I spend around $100 on my child (which is maybe still considered a lot) and $50 on each of my nieces. Birthday is always less….though my child’s birthday is in close proximity to Christmas…..unless it’s a benchmark like 10 and then we did a party of their choice.
I am of the “the birthday party is the present” group of parents, lol. I might get something small in addition. But like… even just an ordinary party thrown at your house with some balloons, a few pizzas, chips, and a cake runs you a couple hundred bucks.
I normally just got clothes.
For me, expensive gifts on Christmas is a German/European thing
Growing up we got 1 present that was a toy/video game normally valued in the ~$60-40 range. The rest were our needs fulfilled. So think clothes/shoes that needed replacing. The rest was focused on religion. Family was focused on during Thanksgiving. Bigger gifts were normally for birthdays.
Now I’m married to a German woman, and her/her family idea of Christmas is very different. We are typically gifting each kid what I would have expected for the family. I.e. each kid is getting 3ish toys each go, plus the rest. Religion takes a backseat to ensuring family time. It’s a bit different, not bad.
You get the presents your family can afford. You get more presents at Christmas than on Birthdays typically. But the monetary value for either will be as expensive as your family can afford.
Christmas was always the time for bigger gifts – everyone is getting them at the same time so it’s easier to make it equal
This can’t be a real question. This is definitely not just an American thing. I know for a fact people around the world practice giving gifts, usually expensive ones, around the Christmas holidays. Because if you’re going to give gifts, you’d rather save up for the actual holiday where gift giving is the main focus. I grew up in a mixed, multicultural Asian family, and this was the case.
Based on the other answers in here, other countries like the UK, Canada and Australia do it too.
If it’s for the family, it was on Christmas. A gaming console would’ve been for my brother and me, not just a single kid. For birthdays we didn’t usually do a lot of gifts when I was a kid. Maybe one or two presents? And then Christmas, there’d be a bunch of stuff. 10+ per kid.
But that was all before 2008. We stopped celebrating Christmas when the economy collapsed. No money 🤷♀️
I always got bigger presents on my birthday. I think this really depends on the region of the country you live in.
More expensive presents were always a Christmas thing. I would get smaller presents for my birthday but my mom would use layaway for Christmas presents. And it still wouldn’t be big ticket items. We would get the yearly Barbie or whatever. The one time mom spent a significant amount of money, it wasnt Christmas or birthday, it was tax refund. She got a particularly good refund and she set aside 1000 and we went to American girl store and my mom, sister, and I all got a doll and some outfits and accessories.
I give my son expensive gifts on Christmas and his birthday lol. But yes, the best gifts are usually at Christmas.
Yeah, my family does more for Christmas than for bdays. For EX from my dad for my bday I get $100, for Christmas I get at least $600 worth of gifts.
Yeah more expensive gifts are pretty common for Christmas
Christmas has become very consumeristic in the US. It’s common to give elaborate/expensive gifts (and also to buy them on Black Friday to take advantage of deep discounts).
Santa was magical so we might get our kids something more indulgent like a gaming console. They had to share that way, and they attributed the gifts to him so they were always a little more grounded when it came to how much they received from us.
One year I heard them talking about whether Santa was real and they concluded he was because they said we never would have gotten them a Wii, haha.
When I was a child in South America, birthday and Christmas were equally special and got “expensive” gifts. So not just a North American thing.
I can’t speak to anywhere else, but Christmas in the US is hugely commercialized and I’d wager it is the biggest gift giving/getting holiday on the calendar. A lot of big ticket items are price reduced at this time with Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and holiday discounts in general, so it’s a good time to buy these kinds of things if you’re going to.
Birthdays just depend on the family. In my family, birthday stuff tends to be more experiential and also milestone driven. For example, when my oldest turned 10 we booked a hot air balloon ride.
Birthday, Christmas and Easter are the times my kids get expensive things. Usually just one expensive thing for Easter.
>And idk that’s just been strange to me because my more expensive gifts, like my 3DS, my PlayStation, my Wii U, my Switch, were all birthday presents
We get expensive gifts on our birthdays too, but I suspect that’s also true in your country. The retail market is built around Christmas though, but I also suspect that’s true in your country, even if just because the release of consoles and such follows the US market. Christmas is maybe the bigger than your birthday here, but it also depends on when your birthday falls in the year, and you’re families traditions. Like if your birthday is in the summer, you’re probably getting outdoor things like bikes for your birthday. If you’re birthday is in the winter, you’ll probably get a bike in the summer ‘just because’ otherwise you’d end up getting a bike you couldn’t ride for several months, which would suck.
Not necessarily some people don’t buy expensive gifts for Christmas
No. It depends on your parents entirely. Some cultures also don’t celebrate Christmas so this couldn’t possibly be an “American” thing.
The big ticket gifts for children are definitely more typical on Christmas than on one’s birthday. Gaming consoles in particular tend to be released a month or so before Christmas for this reason.
In my family we probably spend about $200 each on gifts for siblings and parents/kids. For their birthday maybe $50
It depends. I grew up poor and we got inexpensive and/or homemade gifts. As an adult, I have not particularly wanted to get into expensive gifts and instead keep things fairly minimal. I don’t have children, so the adults in my household do stockings only with little stocking stuffers. I do send gifts to my niblings, but usually not terribly expensive gifts, toys and games, typically. We also fill a stocking with treats and toys for our small dog.
I’m a December baby. My bday and Christmas presents were combined if they were expensive.
Christmas was the main gift giving day in my home. My dad was a farmer and as such had more money in December than in other times of the year. The crops had been harvested and some sold so there was money in the bank. Most toys or things like electronics were received at that time. We got our winter clothes then too. Birthdays were not a big deal. My sister and I have ours in the summer and brother has his in April. We had dinner with the family and cake and maybe one gift.
And don’t forget Santa is an elitist. At least in America. Poor kids get socks and undies rich kids get Playstation and xbox.
We tend to do bigger gifts for Christmas for my parents especially. For birthdays we try to stick to a set amount. The older kids just get that amount of cash(they don’t want stuff) for birthdays and it’s slightly more for Christmas.
Birthdays were modest – you got to pick what was for dinner, and mom would make cake or pie (my brother preferred pie) for dessert, a couple small gifts or you could invite 3 friends to sleep over.
Christmas, on the other hand, was insane. Mom & Dad saved all year and took advantage of sales to get us what they could. It took forever to open our gifts because we kept wanting to stop and play with everything. Pretty dang magical.
At least in my area there seems to be a common expectation of making Christmas magical for children and I know people who go overboard. As in maxing out credit cards and skipping a mortgage payment. I don’t know how they can catch up after the holidays just to do it again.
I am probably in the minority. I think the commercialization of Christmas is disgusting. The amount of gifts in some homes is totally crazy. These people have been brainwashed by the media to think gifts = love. The more you love someone, the more you should buy or worse, go into debt.
I think generally people get big gifts for both Birthday and Christmas. Christmas is a bigger celebration because everyone is celebrating but both seem to be big gift holidays, particularly for children.
Its a commercial culture thing, where commercials have basically become our only shared national culture and way of relating to new people.
Usually, Xmas and Birthday are the big ones.
I didn’t notice the difference. But there are more sales during the holidays so I can see gifting someone more than usual.
You would probably need to ask non-Americans this.
It’s also easier to give joint presents for Christmas. I remember the family getting a video game console when we were young enough to all enjoy it (I was like 6). It wasn’t a me gift. It was an us gift. My parents could never afford to do that for each of us for birthdays until we got older and they were doing better financially. Fast forward to my 13 birthday and I got an Xbox. My oldest two siblings were out of the house and the other wasn’t interested, so it was a just me present.
Yeah, as a kid, my parents spent about 3x on my Christmas presents as they did on my birthday present. I don’t track my spending like my parents did, but I’d guess I spend about double on my kid’s Christmas gifts compared to her birthday presents.
I would say that most people get more for Christmas than birthday, but that lots of people still can’t afford to get their kids a video game station.
For some folks it is. My wife who has passed thought that she had to spend thousands of dollars on the kids. I never felt that way but I just let her spend whatever she wanted to out of her income. Nowadays I spend almost nothing on Christmas. It’s just not with the holiday is about.
All my kids got big for Christmas but we usually start shopping in late summer
My son got a 3000.00 Alienware computer for Christmas, my daughter got a new phone, etc. we spend a lot of money on our kids. Around 4000.00 each. They are 23 and 15.
And anyone saying that’s too much, bite me. It’s our money and we worked damn hard to get to this point in our lives. I’ll pay college tuition, buy them cars, and give them big christmases.
Mind.
Ya.
Business.
We tend to do a large family gift/trip and then everyone gets a few things they need. Our kids stockings are the basics, socks, underwear, lip gloss/chapstick, school thermos. And then they get a couple individual gifts, my in laws go wild but financially they can and so their kid may get a PS5 or a new phone. Our kids Switch was the family gift.
Birthdays we have an every other year rule when it comes to what they want. Either a friends party or they get to pick a weekend trip or sporting even or something like that. And then again a few small gifts.
My family does most of our gifts on Christmas Eve.
When I was younger my brothers and I got a new console every couple of years for christmas. But now we kinda agreed to only spend like $30-50 on each for christmas and do about the same for each other’s birthdays. We kinda get together on buying gifts for our parents and grandma
Yes it was in my family, even now in our 40’s my parents spend about $150 on our birthdays and probably at least 3x that for Christmas.
Birthdays are much more lowkey.
My son definitely gets bigger gifts on Christmas. I got him a PS4 one birthday but that’s only because it was mid April 2020 and the world sucked. Usually his birthday presents are more like a PS4 game.
Christmas was definitely bigger gifts time for me. Maybe its because I have a November birthday.
Me and my brother usually got a different game system with a game or 2 each. (Sometimes it was thrifted. I remember my ps2 came with a bunch of random games we’d never heard of because someone was selling a used bundle). But we also got lots of other smaller gifts too. My mom just had to make sure we had lots of things to open for some reason, idk it’s kinda disgusting me as an adult.
My 3 year old gets a big gift for her June birthday (usually something for outside. A slide, a 2 swing set, a tiny trampoline) and we get her smaller stuff for Christmas. This year I found a free art easel that was in really good condition so we called that her big gift for Christmas. I’m trying to scale back Christmas because it really shouldn’t be about the gifts, and she gets gifts from 3 other families anyway.
Yeah, there’s more gifts and better gifts on Christmas than on a birthday. For my family personally this is true but the birthdays have memories as we always go out to do something, whereas we don’t visit anyone for Christmas. (My grandma will usually come to us, maybe an aunt too)
As a parent, we go bigger on Christmas because at birthdays, there’s a lot more people providing present. Christmas is just us & grandparents.
Definitely yes. Christmas is for the bigger gifts-a gaming system, a bike, et al. Birthdays are usually a dinner and some smaller things. To me, Christmas is where everyone gives everyone, whereas your birthday is about you so the experience is part of it. Also, for many there would be a birthday party.
For me, my budget is set to save all year round for Christmas spending. Other gifts throughout the year are not budgeted for. So less money for those occasions.
Yeah, it feels like parents go big mostly on Christmas, less so on birthdays.
That was certainly the case for me and my brother and, as far as I know, most of my friends, too.