No wonder one in five say they hate the festive season!The average British mum spends a whopping 13 full days in preparation for Christmas. A survey for the catalogue company Kaleidoscope of 3000 mums found that mums spend 288 hours doing the Christmas shopping, 4.19 hours wrapping presents, 3.03 hours decorating the house, 4.27 hours preparing the Christmas lunch and 4.38 hours cooking it.
And after all that hard work, the survey found that the average Christmas meal lasts just two hours. When it's all over – poor old mum then spends roughly 11 hours cleaning up after the whole shebang.
With all that in mind, it's not surprising that 65% of those surveyed said they found Christmas to be a stressful time of year. But some mums have found cunning ways of reducing the stress – 29% start their planning work as far back as September, whilst an enormous 46% admitted buying items for Christmas in the January sales.
On a slightly happier note – 70% of the women surveyed said that they felt despite all the hard work, their efforts were worthwhile.
November 2006
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The Very Hungry Caterpillar
