Five-year-old Julia cuddles a free teddy bear at a toy adoption station in a branch of Dobbies in Wallington, UK on December 4, 2023. Research shows almost half of parents (46%) in Britain plan to spend less on their children’s Christmas presents this year, and 47% believe their child would not mind receiving a preloved toy as a gift. (Photo by Michael Leckie/PA Wire Press Association)

“Tom Thumb is a character of English folklore. The History of Tom Thumb was published in 1621, and has the distinction of being the first fairy tale printed in English. Tom is no bigger than his father's thumb, and his adventures include being swallowed by a cow, tangling with giants, and becoming a favourite of King Arthur. The earliest allusions to Tom occur in various 16th century works such as Reginald Scot's Discovery of Witchcraft (1584) where Tom is cited as one of the supernatural folk employed by servant maids to frighten children”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Portrait of the dwarf, Tom Thumb standing on the hand of a Guardsman. Charles Sherwood Stratton (1838 – 1883) was nicknamed General Tom Thumb by P T Barnum, the circus owner. (Photo by London Stereoscopic Company/Getty Images). Circa 1875

Boys walk home for lunch from school in the village of Kogelo, west of Kenya's capital Nairobi, July 16, 2015. U.S. President Barack Obama visits Kenya and Ethiopia later this month. His ancestral home of Kogelo is home to Sarah Hussein Obama, his step-grandmother. The Kenyan village, burial place of Obama's father, features an open-pit goldmine, a pork butcher's, a school named after their most famous son and outdoor market stalls. Villagers get around by motorbike taxi or on foot while a donkey-cart transports water. Children, some of them named Obama in honour of the President, walk to and from school together. (Photo by Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)

Britney Spears supporter Phoebe Price and her dog Henry take pictures next to a “Free Britney” Christmas tree set by fans outside a hearing concerning the pop singer's conservatorship at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse, Friday, November 12, 2021, in Los Angeles. A Los Angeles judge ended the conservatorship that has controlled Spears' life and money for nearly 14 years. (Photo by Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo)

Ayaka Oshita, a 27-year-old diver, practices in preparation for the upcoming seasonal feeding performance as a Santa diver at Sunshine Aquarium at Ikebukuro in Tokyo, Japan, 07 December 2021. Oshita has 15-month experience for feeding fish at the aquarium after she joined the aquarium in 2019. The Santa diver performance will be held for three days around the Christmas time. The aquarium will not inform the performance time to avoid the visitors' crowd due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by Kimimasa Mayama/EPA/EFE)

A colourful morning sunrise on Christmas Eve at Victoria Tower on Castle Hill, West Yorkshire, England on December 24, 2017. The history of human activity on the Castle Hill goes back over 4000 years. The site was developed as an iron age hill fort, surrounded by defensive ditches and ramparts. In the Middle Ages there was a castle on the hill, of which the well remains. The present tower was built to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee of 1897. (Photo by Charlotte Graham/ZUMA Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Models clad in costumes of video game charactors pose at a game booth during the Tokyo Game Show 2016 in Chiba, suburb of Tokyo, on September 15, 2016. Sony took centre stage at the annual four-day event, with its virtual reality headset ready to hit store shelves for the Christmas shopping season. (Photo by Toru Yamanaka/AFP Photo)

Revellers dressed as the Devil take part in a parade to celebrate Saint Nicholas Day (Mikulas) in Prague, Czech Republic on December 5, 2022. Meeting Saint Nicholas, the Aangel, and the Devil, who talk to children and reward those who have behaved well during the year with small presents, is tradition in the Czech Republic before the Christmas holidays. (Photo by Michal Cizek/AFP Photo)