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What should be a great holiday season for Italians, Christmas time, has become a concern for millions who will neither give nor receive presents this year due to the persisting economic crisis.
Several citizens told Xinhua they had no reason to happily celebrate the much awaited festivity while their families are struggling to pay bills and taxes.
Official unemployment levels in Italy have topped 12.5 percent and more than 40 percent of young people, the highest rate ever, are currently without a job.
"My Christmas? It will be quite sad. I lost my car driver job five months ago and now I cannot even ask a girl out for dinner," 34-year-old Bruno Baldi told Xinhua.
"Maybe I should move abroad but it would be a pity. I love my country," Baldi said. A study by Rome-based Censis social research institute found that the number of Italians who left their home country to seek a job has more than doubled over the past 10 years.
Not only the youth has trouble. Nearly half of retirees receiving benefits from Italy's social security agency INPS get less than 1,000 euros per month, and 14.3 percent of all INPS pensioners, or more than two million people, see less than 500 euros per month.
"The money that I used to spend on presents is now destined to apartment expenses," a retired man, Bruno Legnani, said.
The elderly man was especially sorry that he could not buy a nice Christmas present for his grandson. "There is much more poverty in Italy than it seems to be," he said.
Consumer groups estimated that Italians will be spending even less this holiday season than in previous years. Spending on gifts was expected to drop by 11.2 percent compared with 2012 for an average gift budget of 132 euros per family.
Clothing and footwear budget will decline by 12 percent while expenses for household gifts will drop by 31 percent. Even Christmas trees will be smaller and often recycled.
This is leading to increasing concerns for retailers, a fundamental segment of the country's economy that relies very much on holiday spending to survive.
According to business association Confesercenti, purchasing power for Italian households was set to fall another 4.8 percent this year after a 4.9 percent decline from 2011 to 2012 reported by INPS.
In addition, many companies were also warning that they cannot afford to pay Christmas bonuses this year.
Italy's Prime Minister Enrico Letta has said he believed his country was gradually coming out of recession during the final quarter of 2013 and will return to growth next year.
But it can take considerable time before any economic turnaround is felt by families, analysts highlighted.
Since Monday, a projected one-week protest set to disrupt bustling pre-Christmas commerce has caused major disruption throughout the country.
Thousands of protesters and striking truckers blocked transportation and assaulted shops and offices to protest heavy taxes, high fuel costs and alleged government mismanagement in combating the economic crisis.
According to European Union's statistical agency Eurostat, almost 30 percent of the Italian population was at risk of slipping into poverty last year, while as many as 14.5 percent were "severely materially deprived."
A study released by Italy's national statistical institute Istat confirmed the trend saying that almost six in 10 citizens see themselves as worse off this year compared with 2012.
"It will be another Christmas of austerity," a shopper, Marisa Cattaneo, told Xinhua.
She noted the only average increase was expected in smaller-ticket items or foodstuffs, partly because of relatively low prices, while better-off families were still spending on their Christmas holidays skiing.
"But even those who have money are using it unhappily," Cattaneo went on to say. "An oppressive sense of bitterness weighs upon people, which not even Christmas time is able to put right," she stressed.
