In the 1960s, both the Charlie Brown and the Grinch TV specials forewarned about the growing commercialization of Christmas. Despite their warnings, Christmas has become big business in the United States.
Here are just a few facts about the business side of Christmas.
• Christmas tree farms sell 25-30 million real trees each year – in 2018, it was 32 million, accounting for about $6.1 billion in sales. The states producing the most Christmas trees are Oregon, North Carolina and Michigan, but there are Christmas tree farms in every state.
• Americans spend an average of $123 on gifts for their spouse but will dish out an average of $275 per child. The total spent averaged $867 in 2021, down from $886 the previous year but still the second-highest total in the past 20 years. Forty-one percent say they’ll take on debt to buy Christmas gifts.
• Women spend an average of 20 hours shopping for gifts; men spend about 10 hours. Sixty percent of Americans (probably mostly men) buy gifts during the final week before Christmas.
• An estimated $15.2 billion is spent on unwanted presents. Clothing and household items were the most unwanted presents. Now 56 percent of Americans prefer receiving gift cards rather than presents.
• The typical American family will spend $213 on décor, including the tree. To light up the home for the Christmas season, depending on how close you come to rivaling Clark Griswold, can cost $202-$607.
• Online shopping is the choice for 60 percent of Americans but that doesn’t mean they do all their buying there – 66 percent say they do the research online but still buy in brick-and-mortar stores, showing the importance for physical stores to also have a strong online presence.
• Amazon is expected to make $148 billion in the final three months of 2022, a 15 percent increase over the previous quarter, thanks to Christmas shoppers.
• Social media is having an increasingly big impact, with 23 percent of Americans saying they rely on social media to help them make gift-buying decisions.
• Mariah Carey makes more than $1.5 million each year from the royalties of just one song – “All I Want for Christmas is You.” Royalties are a big deal in Christmas songs – Mel Torme earned about $45 million in royalties over the years for The Christmas Song. White Christmas still brings in nearly half-a-million dollars for Bing Crosby’s estate.
• Not every star of Christmas classics is getting rich from royalties – Peter Billingsley, the child star of A Christmas Story, earns about $900 a year from that movie while Macaulay Culkin, the star of the highest-grossing Christmas film ever, Home Alone, doesn’t receive a dime because no royalties were included in his contract.
