Christmas Shopping

This topic really has no positives for me like the others. I just don’t like Christmas shopping at all. To me it exemplifies the extreme consumerist vibe of the holiday season and I get exhausted just thinking about it. This year, I went shopping on Black Friday with my sister, mother, and my sister’s best friend and her mother. First off, I’ll be honest in saying that I had a little too much Turkey Day cheer the night before and was seriously hung over. Secondly, I’d learned to hate Black Friday from my high school days working at JoAnn Fabrics and Crafts. I’d never in my life been so confused by middle-aged women who would rouse themselves from slumber at 4 am to get 50 yards of Christmas fabric on sale, then throw in ribbon, wreaths, and sewing accoutrements. The aisles were a horrendous mess at the end of the day and Black Friday to me meant starting my sales associate shift when it was dark and then not leaving again until it was pitch black.

This year I was wholly expecting the day to be a bit different than Black Fridays of the past when our economy was, as the ever eloquent President Bush explained, drunk. Now that we were in an “economic hangover” I expected less people, less buying, less insanity. But leave it to the strength of the American shopper to look a recession in the face and ignore it completely.

When we arrived at the mall they so kindly had provided traffic cops for directing cars in and out of the parking lot, and we had to do the fancy “stalk and park” maneuver to finally get a space. I was faced with the winter shopping predicament of leaving my coat in the car or taking it with me. I like to take my coat with me so then I don’t feel as though I’m making myself welcome and sticking around the mall all afternoon. But then again the most uncomfortable type of hotness seems to over take me when I’m bundled up shopping in a crowded mall or store and I almost feel as though my skin is crawling. I opted for a no coat and entered the mall with so much dread. It was as though I was spiraling into the seventh circle of hell. It seemed everyone in the city had packed themselves into this Sears store and was trying to look at/try on/purchase the same item. I began to itch. The rest of the day went as follows 1) enter a store, 2) try to look at items 3) run into people who can’t seem to walk properly or who like to just chill out in the middle of the aisles 4) pick through the deals which have been thrown into what looks like a rubbish pile 5) see the changing room line is 20 people long 6) continue to sweat and itch and wish I could escape the fiery flames of Christmas shopping hell. We finally left the mall and went to Target which wasn’t much better, especially since this store had shopping carts. I got a glimpse of craziness at its finest when a poor employee starting setting out shelves of movies priced from $1.99 to $5.99. I’ll admit this is a great price for recent films, but the minute I saw my sister’s friend lunge through the crowd for a copy of The Goonies tagged at $3.99 I had to extract myself from the situation. I couldn’t stand to see her mauled for a DVD.