However, St Vincent de Paul Scone president Peter Gilligan says a lot can be gained from teaching our youth a bit of generosity these holidays.

Mr Gilligan dropped into Scone & District Pre-school on Wednesday to collect box loads of gifts from the school’s giving tree.

The tree was implemented to give children and their families the opportunity to donate a Christmas present to others that are less fortunate within the local community.

Mr Gilligan said he was extremely pleased by the amazing effort the families had gone to and the items will now go towards hampers to be distributed across the Upper Hunter.

“It’s a really good way to teach the kids to think of others less lucky than themselves,” he said.

“There are a number of schools across the Upper Hunter that have the same initiative.

“We receive gifts from families of St Mary's Primary School students and St Joseph’s Aberdeen.”

Mr Gilligan took the opportunity to remind the community that Christmas is a very busy period for charities and people can still donate Christmas items for hampers through the St Vincent de Paul collection points.

Scone pre-school director Rachelle Baldwin said the school really wanted to teach the parents that it’s nice to give this Christmas.

“Staff members suggested that we do it every year and we were really pleased with how well it went with quite a few large boxes of gifts being donated,” Ms Baldwin said.

“The presents were mostly for children that are less fortunate but several parents thought to donate gifts for mothers also, so it was lovely to see the generosity from families.”