‘Enter recession’ headlines Dziennik, underlying the November fall in Polish industry production.

Press reviewed by Agnieszka Bielawska.

Good times for Poland’s economy are coming to an end, effects of the crisis are becoming painful, recession knocks on our doors and this heralds a rise in unemployment, writes the daily. Experts alarm the black scenario envisages that the army of jobless people can increase by some one million. Dziennik publishes a short interview with Poland’s former Deputy Finance Minister Stanislaw Gomulka who says that investments, the fly wheel of Poland’s economy, may drop by 10% and predicts that the worst  time for the economy will fall on the threshold of 2009-2010. ‘How will all this affect the average man in the street?’ asks Dziennik and professor Gomulka answers that paradoxically if households continue to spend money , the problems with recession will be lower.

Gazeta Wyborcza adds ‘production on the fall, come shopping time’. The weekend preceding Christmas is a haven for traders. For six days, Poles will be buying and cramming shops all over the country in a pre Christmas craze. Food, decorations, clothes, shoes and household devices - everything that Santa can bring under the Christmas tree. Apparently expectations are, that this year will be leaner, Poles plan to spend some one billion zloty less than in December 2007 , but Gazeta underlines that  many experts point that people reluctantly decrease their expenses because that points to lowering of their living standards.

Shopping fever attacks massively but Rzeczpospolita writes that Poles are fed up with Christmas. Three fourth of the respondents to a poll commissioned by the paper say that the atmosphere of Christmas dissolves in the shopping rush. Santas, reindeers and Christmas trees attacking you since early November successfully deprive you of the family atmosphere of Christmas and  transform you into a buying machine, say the respondents.

And the life of a Santa Claus is a harsh one writes Zycie Warszawy, the Warsaw city daily. All those who undertake the task of impersonating Santas in supermarkets, kindergartens or at homes during Christmas Eve have to brace themselves against attacks of timidity, persistent questions, and attempts of beard tugging. They have to be on alert and refrain from using bad language, muttering stupid comments and most of all stay sober. Kids’ noses are the most sensitive alcohol detector. It is embarrassing enough to be a sloshed Santa, but to be publicly declared by a 5 year old as being a drunkard and not a Santa is a total failure, warns the daily.