Irish big spenders, Russians scrooges at Xmas

 When it comes to splashing out at Christmas, Irish shoppers are the most generous while Russians are the Christmas scrooges, according to a new report published on Thursday.
Global accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers said Irish people spent on average $1,184 (955 euros) per person last Christmas, topping a list of 12 countries surveyed.
At the other end of the generosity scale was Russia, whose consumers spent a miserly $93 per capita during the 2013 festive season.
Behind the Irish were the British, who spent on average $1065 putting presents under the tree, followed by the Americans, who spent $776 each.
The thriftiest Christmas shoppers in Western Europe were to be found in Spain, where each person spent $184.
However, in overall terms, spending in the United States dwarfed any other country, the PwC report said.
Total Christmas spending in the United States was $245 billion in 2013. The lowest overall spending in the report came from crisis-hit Greece, where consumers spent only $2 billion between them.
PwC also calculated the difference in Christmas spending in 2007, before the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers sparked a global economic meltdown, and 2013.
The firm's senior economist Richard Boxshall said: "Some of the scars of the financial crisis are still visible in Christmas spending habits: US Christmas spending remains 10 percent behind that of 2007 in real terms."
In Greece, which was battered by the eurozone economic crisis, "real per person Christmas spending dropped by around 60 percent overall in the six years to 2013."
Only in Britain and Germany has Christmas shopping spending rebounded to the levels seen before the crisis, PwC said.
"Shoppers in Britain and Germany are determined to have themselves a merry little Christmas," Boxshall said.