Christmas inflation 2025: panettone, jewellery and travel weigh on Italian families' budgets

Christmas as a day of celebration and family reunion, but also an expense that puts a strain on wallets. According to preliminary estimates by Codacons, Italians' spending for Christmas 2025 will reach €28 billion this year between food, travel, gifts and catering, with an average expenditure of €1,085 per family. Festivities on which Black Friday plays a primary role, with one gift out of two purchased during the discount period, but also the high prices that affect some sectors, from food to tourism, passing through gold and jewellery.

The prices of typical Christmas sweets in Italy have risen steadily in recent years, to the point that today to buy an industrial pandoro or panettone you will spend an average of 42% more than in 2021, but if you choose chocolate-based products, the price rises are even 89% higher. The data emerged from a study conducted by the Centre for Training and Research on Consumption (C.r.c.), which reviewed the symbolic products of the Christmas festivities, comparing the price lists of 2021 with those of today. The C.r.c. survey then examined Christmas trees, balls, LED lights, and various decorations sold by some chains specialising in household products, comparing the prices of the same products between 2021 and today: in this case the average increases are +30.7%.

Spending on gifts for friends and relatives remains substantially stable, with around €9.5 billion worth of gifts that will end up under the tree," explains Codacons. "One in two purchases made during the period of discounts represented an early Christmas present, consolidating the trend of recent years. At the top of the list of goods that will be given the most as gifts during the festive season we find once again this year - after the ever-present toys for children - clothing and accessories, followed by electronics and food, but there is a novelty: the share of citizens who will decide to give jewellery, one of the most popular products at Christmas, is significantly decreasing. This is due to prices in the jewellery sector, which have risen by an average of +26.3% year-on-year over the past month due to the soaring price of gold.

There is also an increasing use of artificial intelligence for choosing gifts for relatives and friends, increasingly used by Italians as an aid in identifying the most suitable gift to buy.

For the traditional Christmas Eve dinner and Christmas lunch, Italians will spend some EUR 3.1 billion, with some products also registering significant price increases: this is the case of cocoa whose prices rise by +21.1% year-on-year, coffee (+18.8%), chocolate (+9.3%), eggs (+7.7%), while cheese and lacticini cost 6.4% more than last year, meat 5.8% more.