More seriously, the company, which polled 15,743 people around the world, said that mobile phones were the top choice for holiday gifts. In addition, for all countries except for the UK and Brazil, text messaging remains the first choice for sending holiday greetings, compared with greetings cards, phone calls and multimedia messaging.

Global economy concerns

The study showed that the most stressful aspect about this year's holiday season was limited spending power.

However, the financial pressures are not stopping people in Hong Kong and Australia from going on a holiday shopping spree. They indicated they would be spending more than US$500 this festival season break. Britons, Singaporeans and Brazilians will spend US$100-300. Malaysians said they would be spending US$50-100.

Finally, Singaporean respondents picked Dean Martin's 'Let it Snow' as the number one holiday song whereas Malaysia chose Bing Crosby's 'White Christmas' (in the UK, Slade's rocking 'Merry Christmas Everybody' was the top pick).