The Shopping Season
After the frenzied preparations leading to The Big Day, after we all went to malls and shops and craft fairs and markets and spent money and money and packed and schlepped and wrapped and cooked and served and ate and drank and shopped some more, with the tenor getting more and more hysterical leading up to 5 pm on the 24th of December when, if you're not done by then you're too late! Shop soon! SHOP NOW! we stop. We rest. We don't go to stores anymore, at least not that day. We spend time with our family and friends, because what else is there to do? Nothing's open! But don't worry, because all Christmas is is just a day of rest until the REAL big day:
Boxing day.
The day everything that wasn't on sale is now on sale. And now, instead of going out without even the pretense of goodwill and buying something thoughtful for someone else, we go out and buy the big screen TV we really wanted instead of those socks from Grandma.
After the increasing whirlwind of Christmas shopping, it seems to me the last thing anyone would want to do would be to head out to yet another nutty mall to fight other shoppers and drive in circles looking for parking spots and stand in long lines yet again. But people do. Braver (crazier?) people than me.
Do we "deserve" it, as the Vancouver Sun says? What's the motivation behind this "new shopping season"? Is it because we're just bored, the stat holidays where we're stuck with our family (the people we claim to truly miss but really studiously avoid all year) interminably long, dying for the distraction of the quick mall fix?
Or is it just being smart? Certainly, the deals the week after Christmas are astonishing. You'll get the best prices on anything you want at this time of year. So if you've been waiting to upgrade your [insert item here], now's definitely the right time to do it. And if you plan it well, there's no reason to claim that we're just buying in to the shopping frenzy as a substitute for something else missing in our lives. (Plasma screen as substitute for real human interaction? Says the blogger, without a trace of irony.)
Who knows.
But over here, in our little corner of the world, I'm thankful not to be out in the frenzy anymore. I had enough before Christmas, the lines and the hassles and the "are you really sold out of"s. Today, we'll stay in our pyjamas and play with the toys - both grownup and kid versions - and eat turkey leftovers and watch a movie and be kind to one another. Because around here, that's more valuable than a 75% off sale any day.
This is an original post to Canada Moms Blog. Shannon blogs at ThreeSeven.ca and saves the world at ecochick.ca.
