Mom Takes Flak for Buying Kids 300 Christmas Gifts

Emma Tapping gets grilled online over holiday photo
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 11, 2015 6:00 PM CST
Mom Buys Kids 300 Christmas Gifts, Takes Lots of Flak
Emma Tapping posted this image of her Christmas tree online.   (YouTube)

What's wrong with giving your family hundreds of Christmas gifts? Quite a bit, according to reaction one mom received on social media. Emma Tapping, a married mother of three, posted a photo of her family Christmas tree nearly buried under more than 300 gifts. She then saw the image shared thousands of times, often with nasty comments about materialism and spoiled children, UPI reports. "The way I see it is you can buy your kids two presents or 200 presents—it's the way you bring them up," Tapping said when defending herself on the British TV show This Morning. "My kids know the difference between right and wrong, they appreciate everything they get, and they don't get spoiled throughout the year." The 35-year-old Isle of Man resident says she shopped all year, hunted for bargains, accrued no debt, and spent about $2,276, the Mirror reports.

Enter the critics: "It's nearly time for all the materialistic parents to compete and broadcast how many presents their kids have on Facebook," someone wrote on a shared version of Tapping's photo, per Buzzfeed. Others believe Tapping's kids are "suffering some form of abuse because they are being paid for their love in gifts and presents," says This Morning co-host Holly Willoughby. And some call Tapping (who blogs about bargain shopping) an attention-seeker, but she sees it differently, the BBC reports. "I'm not 'insta-famous'—I've only got a couple of hundred followers and I didn't think anything of it," she says of her post. "I think how I spend my money on my children is my choice. You may not agree, but this is three little kids' Christmas tree being blasted." (Read about one family that's packing heat on their Christmas card.)

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