What does economic research tell us about festival gifting and alcohol?

The Chinese managed to wrest a large part of the $200 bn Christmas gift market but failed to make a dent in the biggest gift segment, alcohol

Christmas is here, and a lot of people will be drinking a lot of alcohol. What do economists have to say about this? A lot, actually, but not recently. 

Three decades ago, a little-known economist called Joel Waldfogel decided to analyse Christmas gifts. The question he asked was, what's the difference in satisfaction between getting something that you don't want and getting cash? 

He then tried to ascertain how differently, in terms of money, gift receivers would have spent an amount equivalent to the gift's cost. After the usual abracadabra of economics, he concluded that the difference was between $5