Same procedure as every year? 🎁

Every December, search behavior follows a stable rhythm. Looking at Google search interest from November 18–December 24 (2020–2024), one pattern keeps repeating:

🎅 “Christmas gift wife” peaks just days before Christmas Eve
🎅 “Christmas gift husband” peaks noticeably earlier

Hope you’ve got all your presents ready by now!

📊 Data: Google Trends, standardized on a yearly basis
🛠️ Made with ggplot2 and Figma

Posted by Z3ttrick

29 comments

  2. And if you get really lucky the “gift” he buys you is an electric toothbrush that the next day he starts using for himself. So thoughtful 🙄

  4. To some degree its nice to know that most people dont have their shit together

  5. At first glance, I liked your plot but on a second thought I really don’t get it. What’s in the axis? Percent of what? If this is cumulative probability of searches, how can it have a “peak “?
    Also, the difference in peak percent to previous or next day is barely 10%. Assuming that’s not just variability without any meaning, what conclusion can one take on these 10%?

  6. Ask yourself: what kind of person searches this query when they look for a gift vs something more personalized and how does that change this statement about men and women?

  8. I read a chief data analyst from a major bank in Denmark, made a similar point; there is one day a year when men spend more money in shopping malls compared to women; 23rd december.

  9. Not surprising. Men are more likely to working to the bitter end, and therefore more pre-occupied with work.

  10. These two lines seem pretty well correlated. Some slight difference at the end, but not major.

  11. One year I bought my wife a gift on cyber Monday. Put it in a drawer and completely forgot about it. A few days before Christmas I totally panicked and quick bought her another present. February my wife is like “what is this gift in a drawer for?”

  14. At least for me, it wouldn’t, if she actually gave any hints to what she wants. We have a running wish list and hers is like 3 items, one unpractical and 2 incredibly vague, where I keep a good and long list for mine. I’m also easier to shop for because cooking, computer shit, etc but her hobby is sewing and I’m not going to attempt guessing at that. What frustrates me is, I start this process like Nov 1, where she does everything last minute, and I still ended up rush buying hers this week.

  16. I plan on being late earlier this year. That way I can get a head start on being behind.

    ……..It’s a great motivation technique.

  17. Lmao some of the comments in here.

    I get my wife a gift because I want to…and as somebody said earlier it would be kind of a dick move to not get her something on literally the biggest gift giving day of the year.

    I feel bad for some of your wives man lol

  18. My fiance has gift giving done by July lmao. I’m done in late December

  20. Idk how indicative this is of any sort of large scale trend when half the shopping still takes place in person and also most people are gonna search for something more specific (I hope). Pretty funny though

  21. And here my wife had already gotten my gifts by the first week of November and wrapped under the tree by November 18th

  22. bunch of sheep.

    I searched for “gift for 1 year baby”, which is totally different and way more dignified somehow

  23. I’d hope most people have a better understanding of their partner than to go to google and ask “one generic man / woman gift please”. 

  24. What kind of awful partner would reduce all your preferences and personality down to just the generic search term “is a spouse”?

  25. Doesn’t this data also show that wives are googling more often about what to get their husband more than husbands doing the same for their wives?

    Fun part about data is that I could surmise that men know more about what their wives want than wives do about their husbands!

  26. Why not simply use the trend for “gift”?

    The is significant activity for black Friday which is not shown here by your keyword even though there both in the holiday season.

  27. Where does divorce stands? Like who needs a spouse that needs google to know what his spouse wants.

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