Mom Defends Buying Her Kids 96 Gifts Each For Christmas

Mom’s photos of her family’s massive pile of Christmas presents bring out all the Grinches

You might not know who Emma Tapping is, but if you’re been on Facebook either last December or in the past few weeks, chances are you’ve seen photos of the mountain of gifts that nearly blots out her Christmas tree. The British mom of three made waves on social media last year when she shared a photo of her tree hidden behind towers of presents – 87 for each child and some for her husband to be exact. Here’s last year’s haul.

The keyboard warriors of the internet did not take kindly to Tapping’s photo, with many people accusing her of showing off for posting the picture. People declared to be children were spoiled based on the photo alone. Others told Tapping she needed to donate the gifts to charity instead. Some even went so far as to call her abusive for spending so much.

But Tapping loves doing a big Christmas, and she’s not going to let strangers change her ways. Appearing recently on the UK show This Morning, she said, “If I was doing it 365 and giving them gifts every day I would be spoiling them … me and my partner, we work hard all year round and if that’s what we decide to spend our money on for our children for one day of the year, then why not?”

Tapping spent around $1,800 this year, but she’s not just running through Target and grabbing anything that looks good (though that would be so fun). All her purchases are planned out in advance in order to try and score a deal. She starts shopping at the beginning of the year, and doesn’t use any credit cards or go into debt to purchase her gifts. “I am an ace bargain hunter,” she said. “I’m not asking anybody else for a penny of their money. I pay for the kids myself. Each to their own at Christmas.”

It’s not just toys under the tree. There are less exciting gifts like socks and school supplies in that pile too. “There’s a lot of things there that they need,” she said. “And there’s things there that they want and there’s things there that I chose to buy them, things that I think they’re going to like.” This year she beat last year’s grand gift total, with each child set to unwrap 96 gifts on Christmas morning.

“Another year of hard graft, saving and planning,” she writes. “Another year of my family making me proud everyday. They deserve a great Christmas. The haters will hate but nothing and no one will change how I do Christmas.”

Tapping does it up come Christmas, and she has no plans to stop sharing pictures of her gift haul on Facebook. And really, why should she? Assuming she’s recycling all that wrapping paper, what she’s doing isn’t impacting anyone else. If this is how she wants to spend her money and celebrate the holiday — get merry, girl.

Everyone does holidays their own way. There’s no instruction manual on parenting, nothing that tells us giving our children more than a certain number of gifts is harmful. As long as Tapping feels her kids appreciate their Christmas morning unwrapping marathon, and she’s cool with keeping that many toys organized, then more power to her.

Now on to the real question — are her forearms super toned from all that wrapping?