Black Friday? Who Needs It? (Well, Except for Maybe the Retail Industry…)

So the other day I bought a couple more Christmas gifts. I’ve never been one of those people who feels the need to get up at 2AM on the Friday after Thanksgiving to hit the stores to begin my Christmas shopping. For one thing, I’m not crazy about mob scenes at the mall. And for another, well, I like to sleep in wayyy too much.

Instead, I’ve been buying a few gifts every pay period. So we’re pretty much down to the stocking stuffer kinds of things by now. You know – the everyday things that people need but don’t feel like spending their hard-earned cash on.

Like socks and underwear.

I bought Vince a package of socks because he was complaining about his old ones. And when I got home from the store, I gave them to him. Duh.

Clearly, there is a flaw in my thinking when it comes to early Christmas shopping, since I seem to be giving the stuff away before Christmas. So on December 25th when there is nothing under the tree what am I gonna say? “Hey, honey, remember that package of socks I gave you in November? Well, Merry Christmas!”

The other day I bought him another gift online – one of his two “major” gifts (and, no, we’re not talking a new Maserati. Our budget for major gifts is rather minor). At any rate, I excitedly told him the package will be here on Tuesday – and I know I won’t be able to wait until Christmas morning to give it to him.

Maybe I’ll have to make sure to put a bow on the package so he knows for sure it is an early Christmas gift. And maybe that way he’ll know not to expect a whole slew of packages under the tree.

Or maybe I should show a little self restraint and not give him the gift early?

. . .

Nah. I don’t have that much self restraint. But I want you to know that I did think about it for about a whole half a second (that’s what those little dots were…me thinking.) (Hey, now – there is no need to be sarcastic.)

There is an upside to giving him things well before the holidays. It means that I have fewer packages to wrap. I’m a terrible gift wrapper. I either don’t cut enough paper to sufficiently cover the gift, or I have so much excess that I end up winding the paper around the thing a couple times. Most people in this situation would simply cut off the excess paper. Not me. Because if I do, I end up cutting it crooked. And so then I try to even out the cut. And I keep cutting until – you guessed it – there isn’t enough paper to sufficiently cover the gift.

Sigh.

I once dated a guy whose day job was as a finish carpenter. His Christmas presents were wrapped with such precision – perfectly straight cuts with not one inch of excess paper. He’d tape the ends with such a small piece of tape that it was nearly invisible to the naked eye. And the bow would be placed drop dead center on the gift. I used to watch in awe when he wrapped gifts. He, on the other hand, would watch in utter dismay whenever it was my turn to wrap gifts. “Oh, for crying out loud, Jane,” he eventually exclaim. “Step aside. I’ll do it!”

Yeah, dumb like a fox, I am.

Vince, on the other hand, has not shown an iota of interest in taking over the gift wrapping chores. Thus, I have become a firm believer in gift bags. Throw the gift in a gaily decorated bag, toss in a couple sheets of tissue paper and – voilà – done. Make me a sandwich.

Not only that, but they’re reusable. In our family, we give away the gifts and then we get all the tissue paper and gift bags back. We were being green before being green was cool. My parents simply called anything else “wasteful.”

Except my mom would also give me back anything I attempted to wrap in paper. She’d carefully pick off the gobs of tape I’d slapped on the package to make sure it stayed closed and would hand me back the paper to reuse the next Christmas. I’d roll my eyes and say, “Oh come on, Mom. Unless I get you the exact same thing next year, I will not be able to fit that particular piece of wrapping paper back on any gift.”

Still, she’d hand it back to me and give me a stern lecture on being wasteful. So I learned to shut my mouth and simply accept the mangled sheet of crookedly cut paper with holes in it from where the tape could not be easily removed.

No wonder I learned to use gift bags.

Anyway, like I said, if I don’t stop handing out gifts early, I won’t be needing all that many gift bags. Unless I decide that Black Friday is a very good day to go out shopping. For myself. I won’t even expect anything to be gift wrapped.

Heyyy…now there’s a wonderful idea! Let me think on that a minute . . .

(Really, now. Sarcasm doesn’t become you.)

Christmas Will Be Here In 79 Days…Are You Ready?

I am proud to announce…I have purchased the first Christmas Gift of 2010. Ta-da!!

I know, I know – it’s amazing, isn’t it? Frankly, I think this is news worthy of inclusion in some sort of Hall of Fame – or perhaps the next edition of Ripley’s Believe it or Not.

For the past several years…okay…decades now – I have joined the impatient throngs of last minute Christmas shoppers who power-walk through three different malls in a five-hour time span attempting to find the perfect gift. Which, of course, never materializes. So I end up spending way more than intended just so that I don’t show up at a gift exchange empty-handed. Not only that, but there have been some years where there were very few gaily wrapped packages under the tree, primarily because I gave up on the search and instead went out and bought gift cards.

This year I decided to try a different approach and start a whole 79 days, 18 hours and 35 minutes early. (And, yes I did look it up – the Internet is a veritable smorgasbord of information!)

Plus, while I’m a little slow on the uptake as other people have been doing this for years, I have finally realized the beauty of online ordering. Sit at the computer in your jammies and order away and a few days later – voilà – the package is delivered to your front door. Now I ask you, what could be easier?

When I was in my 20s, I was more organized during holiday time. My to-do list was long, but somehow – in between working and bar hopping – I managed to get most of my Christmas shopping finished well before Thanksgiving. I assumed I would always be just as organized, so I took it for granted. Silly me.

Once I reached my 30s, my holiday organization went down the tubes and I started the last-minute thing. Hmmm…one could almost conclude that eliminating bar hopping led to my downfall.

On the other hand, the gift list wasn’t as long as it has become over the years and the budget was a little thinner back then, so maybe comparatively speaking, last minute shopping is still within the norm.

No, that argument doesn’t really work for me, either.

So now in my 50s, I’ve changed tactics again. And once I ordered that first gift, I started making my list and checking it twice – and driving Vince absolutely nuts with chatter about what to get for whom. He was probably thinking, it’s only the first of October, for cryin’ out loud. Get back to me in December. Like maybe around the 24th!

Vince hasn’t quite bought into the whole list making thing, although he doesn’t begrudge me making the effort. Just as long as I don’t involve him too much in the whole process.

Of course, there is a potential fly in the ointment, as it were, with this new plan. What happens when I finish shopping by the end of October and then shortly thereafter all the Christmas sales flyers and catalogues start to arrive – and I chance upon a better gift for someone? It will probably be too late to return all the gifts I’ve bought online.

Actually, that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that I will start to see all sorts of things that I absolutely must buy for myself! It’s sort of Christmas shopping with the “one for you – one for me” attitude. Hey, I can’t help it. I try to stay away from the mall as much as possible during the year unless I’m absolutely required to purchase new clothes for an event such as a wedding. Or, for a reason such as – I don’t know – like maybe it’s Wednesday and I have nothing to wear. You can never have enough Wednesday outfits…

Yeah, who am I kidding. I hit the mall with the same regularity as mail delivery and with the same motto as the Post Office: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor…”

Well, anyway, I will have to make sure that the gifts I purchase are perfect and exactly what the receiver wanted so that no one will even think about returning them. And I will have to develop a little more willpower so that the massive pile of gaily wrapped gifts under the tree aren’t ALL for me. That could be, well, a little embarrassing.

Hmmm…maybe last minute gift cards aren’t such a bad idea after all…