In Italy, there are queues in front of shops and soup kitchens

Police are directing the crowds of shoppers in downtown Rome. Shops are usually open until the evening of December 24.

According to estimates, residents of the capital spend two billion euros on the holidays, which corresponds to 7.6 percent of the nationally measured spending.

Italians spend nearly three hundred euros per person on gifts. According to the survey, eighty-one percent of Italians are buying gifts this year, almost two percent more than last year.

The Confcommercio trade association calculated that Italians spend three and a half billion euros on dinner on December 24 and lunch on December 25 alone, half a million more than last Christmas. They explain the increase in spending by inflation.

Sixty million bottles of Italian champagne and prosecco are opened, and almost exclusively Italian products are served on the tables. On Christmas Eve, the menu will be fish, shellfish and seafood, while on December 25, the festive sweets, panettone and pandoro, will take center stage. Italians spend more than five hundred million euros on the latter.

During the winter holidays, which traditionally last until Epiphany, that is, January 6, nineteen million Italians travel, but the vast majority of them stay within their own country. Among them will be a large group of southern Italians who live and work in the north but travel home for the holidays.

The turnover of the Daily Bread soup kitchen in Milan set a record in 2025, after more than one and a half million people took advantage of the free food distribution.

On the last weekend of Advent, nearly five thousand people lined up every day for bread and a for a plate of food: according to the center, 70 percent of those in need are immigrants between the ages of thirty-five and fifty, and 30 percent are elderly Italians.

The Szent Egyed Catholic community will provide festive lunches to about eighty thousand people in need in several cities across the country on December 25th.