Panettone, pandoro, nougat and chocolate cost up to 89% more than four years ago. For Christmas gifts, the great classics are confirmed: toys, perfumes and books remain at the top of the top ten for 2025.
Sweets with double the price and super traditional gifts under the tree. Thus Christmas 2025 is approaching. Pandori, panettone and nougats are becoming more and more expensive, with increases that in some cases are close to doubling compared to four years ago. This is certified by an analysis by the Center for Training and Research on Consumption, which photographs a Christmas marked by the high cost of raw materials and inelastic demand. And while the shopping cart weighs more, Italians do not give up on gifts: the National Consumers Union has drawn up the new top ten for 2025 with toys, perfumes and stationery that remain at the top of the ranking.
Christmas sweets, prices out of control: panettone +42% and chocolate and nougats almost doubled
The heart of Christmas is always the same: dessert. But the price has changed radically. The data (Centre for training and research on consumption) show that today for an industrial panettone or pandoro you spend between 5.5 euros for the large-scale retail brand versions and 17 euros for premium products. At first glance nothing surprising… except that in 2021 the same sweets cost on average 42% less.
The figures become even more weighty when you enter the realm of chocolate. Cocoa creams, drops, fillings and icings transform Christmas into a small luxury: in four years the price lists have grown by an average of 89%, with cases in which the price has doubled. The surge in raw materials has had a decisive impact, first of all cocoa, whose value has exceeded 10 thousand dollars per ton, four times the 2021 level. This is followed by butter, which has soared above 8,300 dollars per ton. Nougat is an exception. The increases reach an average of +20.4% on classic products, while the chocolate versions record +56.5%. Here too, the cocoa supply chain weighs like a boulder, while almonds, pistachios and hazelnuts are affected by international fluctuations and variable agricultural yields.
Raw materials that fly, but also a touch of “speculation”, say consumer associations. Sweets are “indispensable” for Italian Christmas, so it is not surprising that their demand pushes producers to adjust their price lists every year, in a market worth almost 600 million euros for 90 thousand tons.
The top ten gifts for 2025: games, perfumes and books dominate under the tree
Despite rising prices, the gift ritual remains strong. The National Consumers Union has lined up the categories with the greatest increase in sales, outlining an interesting picture of Italians’ habits. They are still at the top: games. The toy sector is the only one to have consistently led the ranking for years. In second place are perfumes and, more generally, personal care products. Third step for stationery products: books, diaries, calendars, pens. Just off the podium we find household items, from kitchen utensils to glassware and porcelain, while in fifth place are footwear and leather goods, a category which this year has recorded the best positioning since the survey began. IT and telephony follow, then household appliances: from the television to the coffee machine, from the electric razor to the vacuum cleaner.
At the rear, but still in the top ten positions in the ranking, are musical instruments and optics, the “other products” category (jewelry, watches, flowers), and finally clothing and furs. Bringing up the rear for food and drinks.
In the end, the question is always the same: how much will Italians spend? Preliminary estimates speak of a total of 28 billion euros, including gifts, food, travel and catering, with an average of 1,085 euros per family. The gift component stands at around 9.5 billion, a stable figure thanks to the now consolidated “anticipation” of purchases during Black Friday: one gift in two already ends up in the shopping cart between the end of November and the beginning of December.
