The Emotional Side of Christmas Spending: What We Remember (And What We Don’t)

Now that Christmas and the spending that comes with it is a couple of months behind us, I wonder how it really felt for you this year.

When the decorations came down and the January bank statements arrived, did you feel peaceful… or slightly uncomfortable? Relieved… or a bit raw?

A client shared a Christmas memory with me recently that she still feels in her stomach when she talks about it. She and her husband had recently separated, and she suddenly found herself a single parent with three young children and very little income. That year was never going to look the same financially. Presents weren’t going to be quite as “generous,” and like so many parents in that situation, she carried a quiet weight of guilt before the season had even begun.

She kept the traditions going. Letters to Father Christmas. Baking mince pies. The rituals that make a house feel steady. But when she read her daughter’s list, her heart sank. Top of the page was Blu Blu the Dolphin – the must-have toy of the year. It was everywhere. And it came with a price tag that felt enormous.

Over the following weeks, every time someone asked her daughter what she wanted for Christmas, the answer came back confidently: “Blu Blu the Dolphin!”

She spoke to her ex. Communication wasn’t easy, but she told him she would save and buy it. He agreed. She stretched every penny she had, pushing herself further than felt comfortable, determined to make Christmas “right.”

Then Christmas week arrived. The children went to their dad’s for a couple of days before the big day. She arrived to collect them, tired but proud of the effort she’d made.

The door opened and her daughter ran into her arms, beaming:
“Daddy got me Blu Blu the Dolphin!”

She describes that moment as something that dropped through her. It wasn’t just frustration or anger. It was something deeper. A sense of failure. Comparison. A quiet hit to her self-worth.

When we unpacked it together, it became clear that this wasn’t really about a toy. It had quietly become a competition. An unspoken power struggle at a time when everything already felt fragile. After separation, guilt can run deep. There can be an urge to make up for what’s changed, to compensate for loss, to prove something – sometimes to the other parent, sometimes to ourselves.

But here’s the part she always comes back to now.

Her children are 17, 18 and 21. They don’t remember the dolphin. Not once have they mentioned it.

What they remember are the letters to Santa. The mince pies. Climbing into her bed to open stockings together.

The things that cost very little in money, but everything in love and time.

And this is often what we see when we look back in February. The spending we worried about, the pressure we put on ourselves and the meaning we attached to proving something through money.

It’s rarely about the numbers.

If this year stirred up guilt, comparison, grief or competition for you, you’re not alone. And it doesn’t mean you got it wrong. It simply means there were emotions sitting underneath the spending.

If any of this feels familiar, and you’d like to understand your own patterns a little more clearly, I’m here. We can explore it gently, without judgement.