Eight in every 10 Filipinos expect a happy Christmas this year, even as most of those polled still believe in the adage “It is better to give than to receive,” a Social Weather Stations survey revealed Tuesday.
The polling firm said 79 percent of the people it polled expected a happy Christmas this year, the highest figure posted since the record-high 82 percent posted in 2002.
Nineteen percent of those polled expected Christmas to be neither happy nor sad, while a record-low two percent expect a sad one, SWS said.
Across all regions, the expectation of a happy Christmas was highest in the Visayas at 82 percent, followed by Mindanao at 80 percent, Luzon at 79 percent and Metro Manila at 70 percent.
Since 2002, the proportion of those who expected a happy Christmas had always been lowest in Metro Manila”•except in 2012 when Mindanao scored lower.
Compared with the 2017 figures, the expectation of a happy Christmas rose in the Visayas, Luzon and Metro Manila but declined slightly in Mindanao.
Meanwhile, 76 percent of the respondents said it was better to give than to receive this Christmas, two points higher than the record-low 74 percent in 2018.
The proportion of those who said it was “better to give” was highest in Metro Manila at 82 percent, followed by Luzon at 81 percent, Mindanao at 75 percent and the Visayas at 63 percent.
In contrast with 2017 survey, the sense of giving rose in Luzon and Mindanao but declined slightly in Metro Manila and in the Visayas.
The survey, conducted from Dec. 13 to 16 using face-to-face interviews of 1,200 adult respondents, had a sampling error margin of ±3 percent for national percentages.