Changing Patterns of Christmas Shopping

Every year Christmas sneaks up on me. It shouldn’t, I know. It’s always on December 25. But I hate to shop, and so I avoid the stores until I have no choice. I start to moan about it before Halloween, but usually don’t get serious until close to Thanksgiving.

Only one year in my life did I ever feel like I was “early” on Christmas shopping. That was in 1995, when I had a broken leg and shopped from catalogs while sitting in the back of my minivan during my daughter’s horseback riding lessons. Everything was delivered to my home by early November. Then I just had the wrapping and shipping to deal with.

For most years in that era, I followed the same practice. I shopped the week of Thanksgiving, got about half of my presents bought, then stalled until I panicked. Still, most years, everything was wrapped and mailed by December 15.

The exception was food gifts. I let food vendors ship food directly to my friends and relations.

Since the development of the Internet and online shopping, Christmas should be easier. I shouldn’t have to do the wrapping and mailing. Yet, even after I retired (now thirteen years ago), I still shopped and wrapped and mailed, hustling to get it done between Thanksgiving and December 15. There was always someone who was hard to shop for, though that individual shifted from year to year.

Over the past few years, I’ve started buying more online. Yet even those gifts I purchased online, I had shipped to my home, so I could wrap them and then send them on to their recipients. I guess I felt I should maintain some quality control and personalization by actually touching the gift and wrapping it myself.

Finally, this year I shifted to letting retailers ship most of my gifts directly to recipients. I think it was free shipping that changed my mind. Now that I have an Amazon Prime account, almost all shipping is free. And most retailers are matching Amazon’s free shipping, at least if you buy enough. I think the only shipping I paid for this year was for food gifts that were sent in cold packs.

I do feel odd sending people gifts I haven’t seen. I try to buy from retailers I trust. But Amazon??? I’m a little suspicious of some of the vendors they use, so I stick mostly to brands I know on Amazon.

And books. I trust Amazon on books.

I don’t trust Amazon’s gift-wrapping service. Their gift bags are shoddy, and I’ve known them to forgo the bag altogether, even though I paid extra for it. Sometimes they even forgo the gift card. So I hope my gifts arrive safely and identifiably. It isn’t Christmas without wrapped packages.

I never can remember when to specify gift receipts and when to just send a regular receipt. Oh, well, I guess people will know how much I love them by the relative value of their gifts.

I think there will be some failures from relying on Amazon and other vendors. From one source this year, I could get my daughter-in-law’s gift wrapped, but not my son’s. They were fairly comparable items, so go figure. I hope he won’t be disappointed that his mom didn’t wrap his present. From another source, I sent four gifts to four children. They were all supposed to be wrapped, but I truly wonder if the right gift card got placed on the right toy. Maybe they’ll be able to figure it out from the age range the toy is meant to be for. Or maybe they’ll share nicely. (Siblings? I doubt it.)

It still feels wrong to me to buy things on Amazon and other retailers that I could easily go to the store to buy. But even for myself, I am buying everyday products online. After all, I hate to shop.

Are you ready for Christmas? I am. I think. Almost.