Holiday Spending Hangover

The living room is finally quiet. The pine needles have been vacuumed, and the festive lights are boxed away in the basement. For many, a different kind of presence lingers, one that doesn’t fit in a storage bin. It sits on the kitchen table in the form of a white envelope, or it glows on a smartphone screen in the blue light of a 2:00 AM scrolling session. It is the weight of what was given versus what is now owed.

Across the country, the transition into 2026 has been marked by a profound “holiday spending hangover.”  It is a quiet, rhythmic tension, a tightening in the chest that occurs when the altruism of December meets the cold mathematics of January. According to a new national survey from Liaison Strategies, the reality of this transition is stark: only 19% of Canadians report being not at all concerned about paying their January credit card statements in full. This leaves the vast majority of our neighbours navigating a spectrum of financial trepidation.

Consider the 11% of individuals who, in the wake of the holidays, find themselves in a state of extreme emergency fragility. For them, the “what if” is a looming shadow. What if a furnace fails in the dead of winter? What if a car requires a necessary repair to get to work? For these households, a sudden $500 expense would be an insurmountable hurdle.

“Canadians are feeling the squeeze, and a meaningful share are carrying holiday debt into the new year with real anxiety.”

This anxiety is not distributed evenly across our communities. In provinces like British Columbia and Ontario, the feeling of risk is particularly palpable, with over half the population viewing consumer debt as a systemic threat to the entire national economy. There is a generational divide as well; while older Canadians may feel more secure, 52% of those aged 18–34 expect their total household debt to climb even higher by the end of the year.

As David Valentin, Principal at Liaison Strategies, observed: “Canadians are feeling the squeeze, and a meaningful share are carrying holiday debt into the new year with real anxiety about making their next payments.”

This “squeeze” is a confluence of interest rates and rising everyday costs that continue to bite into the stability of the home. When 45% of the country views credit card debt as a major threat to the broader economy, the concern is a collective signal of distress.

Resilience, however,  is found in the willingness to look at the numbers without blinking and to recognize that the “squeeze” is a shared experience. It is about seeing the humanity behind the spreadsheet. The holiday debt is a shadow, yes, but it is one that millions are walking through together, searching for the path back to solid ground.