For some Australians, tomorrow will be a holiday of acceptable excess — opulent feasts, mountains of gifts and binge drinking.
But many of those straddling the poverty line are worried they will have little to no food on the table, according to research by the Salvation Army.
As inflation bites, many have been forced to adjust to a new, more frugal, normal with charities recording a drop in support and a rise in need from the "working poor".
New cohort calling for help
The Salvation Army's Simon Gregory is set up at the charity's Brisbane toy warehouse – which will distribute 40,000 toys and 1,500 food hampers to families by Sunday.
Mr Gregory said each year the charity surveyed the people it supported and this year found 98 per cent were worried about how they would afford the festive celebration.
"People are under pressure at Christmas time that they can't afford food and toys and they're feeling the pressure to have to maybe go into debt or spend money that they don't have."
He said this year, the need had widened.
"The phenomenon we've seen this year is that working poor-type group," he said.
"They've got the jobs, they are trying their hardest to make a living, and to make ends meet, but it's really difficult at the moment with everything going up, groceries have gone up, rents have gone up, petrol has gone up."
He said the service had also come into contact with more families living in cars.
"So it's a whole new group of people that we've not seen before," Mr Gregory said.
Donations lower than during COVID
For Brisbane's Basket Brigade, the cost-of-living crisis has been a two-pronged hit.
The service relies on volunteers to buy food, and pack and deliver Christmas hampers in the weeks leading up to Christmas.
But organiser Cory Andrews said while donations had fallen by half, demand had grown.
"When you see that it's not coming through to organisations like ours, you know that the community is really hurting."
She said people who donated food and time to deliver hampers, were typically working people and families.
"So probably about 50 per cent of our baskets get individually delivered by community volunteers. But we've actually seen a significant drop in volunteers putting up their hand to do that, and we put that down to the increased fuel cost."
The charity anonymously distributes the hampers to families in need across Brisbane, through 70 grassroots organisations.
"They'll just be receiving less baskets than they normally would, and so they're going to have to try and spread them more widely.
"If they've got an increased demand, it just gets spread thinner and thinner every day," Ms Andrews said.
Christmas on a budget
Brisbane mum-of-two Ellie Evans started 2022 with a strict budget but has had to factor in a $700 monthly rise due to interest rates.
Now, her mortgage and utilities account for 44 per cent of her wage as her household operates from a single income.
She has found room to move by cycling to work – a 50-kilometre round trip – cutting down food bills, and instead of fixing her pool pump when it broke, turned her pool into a pond.
The public servant counts herself lucky that she has family support to fall back on, but said she has had to made adjustments to her Christmas plans due to the pinch of inflation.
"I've been able to allocate a bit more money for the Christmas budget by cutting down on a holiday. I was planning on taking the kids to Canberra or Sydney for a kind of long weekend leading up to Christmas," Ms Evans said.
"But the cost of that, even with discounted airfare, it's in the thousands for three of us, so we decided to go camping with friends instead, so that's only going to cost us $200."
She said managing the impact of the rising cost of living had also been about managing expectations with her children and involving them in decision-making.
