At least 800 million leva were spent for the 10 days around Christmas and New Year’s Eve, show the preliminary calculations made with data from large market chains. This sum is 60 million leva more than 2007, when the “Gallup” data estimated spendings to be about 740 million leva.

The “Gallup” research shos that 85% of the Bulgarians spent Christmas at home, and a rather large percentage of people – 73% – spent New Year’s Eve at the tables in their houses as well.

Despite the chaos in Greece, most of the Bulgarians that had reservations there for the holidays didn’t give up on them and welcomed 2009 in Bulgaria’s southern neighbour.