Next to dental surgery, leg-muscle cramps, and bouncing cheques, I like Christmas shopping the best. That’s why I can’t wait to get around to doing this year’s.
I’m aware some people already have their shopping done and their presents all wrapped but, of course, those people aren’t well so it wouldn’t be kind to drag them into this discussion. Besides, shopping accomplished before Dec. 23 isn’t “Christmas” shopping at all. It’s regular shopping that just happened to take place around Christmas.
Real Christmas shopping is the kind that’s done out of the desperation of knowing the continued love of your family and friends depends on the quantity and quality of your purchases.
As the clock ticks down to Christmas Eve, you’re fully aware that, though you probably don’t deserve them, a whole truckload of great gifts have been bought and wrapped and placed under a tree for YOU. It occurs to you eventually that you now have to produce gifts for all the important people in your life. And good ones at that. You’ve known this, of course, since last Christmas, but insisted on ignoring it.
Therefore, Christmas shopping eventually becomes, not an exercise in expressing love, which even the lowliest pet can do with little trouble, but an attempt to avoid guilt, which almost nobody is good at.
Compounding the dilemma are several problems. By Christmas Eve, there is often not a lot left in the stores, or so it seems. When you find yourself in the stationery department at 2 p.m. on Dec. 24, considering a stapler as your wife’s main present, you know you’re in trouble. Big trouble.
As the clock ticks out its countdown to Christmas Day, you become a quivering bundle of indecision. You run from the music store to the clothing store to the jewelry shop and back to the music racks. One minute you’re checking out fuzzy slippers with velcro closers and the next, a fancy sweatshirt with Hurry Up And Hug Me written on the front. Then an automatic can opener, a Bart Simpson key chain and The Greatest Hits of Johann Sebastian Bach performed on the accordion.
The second big problem with last-minute Christmas shopping is money, a best friend of guilt. The worse you feel, the more you’ll spend. Where you might have started out with a vague figure in your head which you thought would make a decent spending limit, by Christmas Eve you’re flashing the cash around like Donald Trump on a spree.
And finally, what endears me the most to Christmas shopping are the people in the stores in the dying hours before the big day. Not the employees, though they’re usually sick and tired of it all. But the other shoppers. People like yourself who are mad at themselves for laughing at the early birds who were out getting the best worms way back in November. I’d like a loonie for every time I’ve been run down by shopping carts driven by cranky, little old ladies or their befuddled husbands.
What a strange tradition.
But even stranger is the realization that when your Christmas Eve-bought presents are opened and a big fuss has been made over them all, that you like this, that you have no intention of giving it up and that this last-minute stuff must be part of the thrill.
Either that, or a sign of mental illness, which we’ll discuss in a future column.
©1990 Jim Hagarty
