Britons like friends better than family at Christmas - research

Four in ten Britons will reject the traditional family Christmas this year in favour of being with their friends, according to the latest research published.

Up to 24 million of us will eschew the pressure and stress of a familial Yuletide gathering and choose to spend the day with mates instead.

Even those who do celebrate Christmas with relatives will secretly be wishing they could escape and celebrate with their contemporaries.

Four out of ten people in the UK will spend Christmas Day with friends, while more than a third of those who do plan to celebrate Christmas with family admitted they would rather be elsewhere.

The survey illustrates the ongoing erosion of traditional family ties in favour of strengthening the bonds of friendship.

The traditional family Christmas is also getting smaller as two thirds of those questioned said they expected fewer family members to be at the table than in previous years.

When splashing out on Christmas gifts people are more generous when buying presents for friends, particularly in those under 40.

One in five said they would be spending more on Christmas presents for friends than family. Among the 20-39 age group, that figure shot up to 29 per cent.

The reasons behind the seasonal shift is thought to be that families no longer live in such close proximity to each other. Rather than living in the same street people are scattered across the country and even the world.

Like the hit US sitcom Friends, which ran for a decade until 2004, the importance of friendship groups has become more significant.

In addition the increased number of broken marriages means that there is often no clear family home in which to celebrate.

Young people tend to live in flatshares for longer because of the difficulty of getting on the property ladder, creating urban families that usurp traditional family units.

According to earlier figures from HSBC shared mortgages among friends have increased in London by 50 per cent in the past year, and are set to rocket further over the next decade.

And, in keeping with the break from tradition, half of adults questioned in the latest survey by ICM said they prefer to eat anything but turkey on Christmas Day despite arguments from domestic goddess Nigella Lawson that Christmas can never be the same without turkey and all the trimmings.

Nonetheless, nearly one in five of us would rather have roast beef, researchers found.

The survey of 1,000 adults was carried out for PR firm Van Communications.

Its director Mark Cooper said: "The findings are another example of the erosion of the traditional family model and the traditional Christmas.

"More and more people are turning to close friends to act as their support network when life takes a difficult turn.

"This being the case, it makes perfect sense for people to also want to enjoy their happiest moments of the year with their closest friends too."