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Understanding the Scrooging Dating Trend

Are People Really Breaking Up With Their Partners Right Before the Holidays?

December 21, 2024

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The Story

As online dating has exploded in the 21st century, a raft of new dating terms has surfaced to describe the behaviors, people and situations you’re likely to encounter while looking for love (or lust, or platonic companionship) on the apps.

And while so many of them have already been defined, described and dissected ad nauseam already, as time goes by, new trends and behaviors do pop up — and the latest one we’ve seen is frankly a pretty depressing one: Scrooging.

The Snapshot

A recent report by datingscout.co.uk posits a handful of new dating trends, including ‘throning’ and ‘future-proofing.’

However, the most compelling one at the moment? A holiday-oriented trend that they’ve called ‘scrooging,’ after the infamous villain of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.

As Ebenezer Scrooge was a cruel and uncaring man who received his comeuppance (and spiritual awakening) on Christmas, scrooging is about a trend of people ruining the holidays for their significant others — by dumping them right beforehand.

As the report notes, “'scrooging' is a growing trend online for when relationships end just before significant occasions, namely Christmas. But it's not just the festive season, the experts see this trend last long into 2025, around birthdays, Valentine's Day or even summer holidays.”

This isn’t just about being cruel — it’s about protecting themselves, essentially. Datingscout founder Chris Pleines notes that:

“People who break off relationships ahead of Christmas or a birthday often aim to avoid the financial expense of buying a gift—hence the 'Scrooge' reference. They may also seek to dodge the commitment of celebrating a big event with someone.”

The Lesson

As with all dating trends, it’s hard to have clear data on how prevalent they are, exactly.

But scrooging makes a degree of sense in a world where so many people are struggling economically. Spending big bucks on gifts for your partner isn’t the only way to make them feel loved, but many people (guys especially) receive the cultural message that it’s a necessity, and the holidays can amp that pressure up.

If you’re already feeling uncertain about the relationship, that pressure to spend more money than you can afford can be a deciding factor in leading to the end of a relationship. Furthermore, as Pleines notes, if the relationship is in a rocky place, it may feel easier to simply end it rather than face family dinners as a unit.

So, if you were dumped recently, it may be helpful to remember that you’re not alone, and that this isn’t just about you, it’s also a reflection of the context and potentially your ex’s insecurities.

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