4 out of 5 Filipinos expect happy Christmas

MANILA, Philippines — About four out of five Filipino adults expect a “happy” Christmas this year, a survey by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) showed.

The poll found 79 percent of Filipinos who expect this Christmas to be happy, while only two percent expect it to be a “sad” one.

The Fourth Quarter 2019 Social Weather Survey, conducted from Dec. 13 to 16, used nationwide face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adults 18 years old and above.

Nineteen percent of the respondents expect this Christmas to be “neither happy nor sad.”

SWS said the 79 percent expecting a happy Christmas was higher than the 77 percent registered in 2017. It was also the highest since the record-high 82 percent in 2002.

Expectation of a happy Christmas was highest in the Visayas at 82 percent (from 80 percent in 2017), followed by Mindanao at 80 percent (down from 84 percent), balance Luzon at 79 percent (from 75 percent) and Metro Manila at 70 percent (from 69 percent). 

The December 2019 survey also found 76 percent of Filipinos who believe that it is “better to give” this Christmas season, while 23 percent say it is “better to receive.”

The 76 percent who say it is better to give than to receive this Christmas was up two points from the record-low 74 percent in 2018, and was the highest since the record-high 81 percent in 2017. 

The proportion of those who say it is better to give was highest in Metro Manila at 82 percent (from 84 percent), followed by balance Luzon at 81 percent (from 76 percent), Mindanao at 75 percent (from 72 percent) and the Visayas at 63 percent (from 67 percent).

The survey has sampling error margins of plus or minus three percentage points for national percentages.