Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Christmas Shopping

December 19 - Christmas Shopping
How did your family handle Christmas Shopping?
Did anyone finish early or
did anyone start on Christmas Eve?
My father rarely allowed my mother to drive his car so we frequently took the bus to Syracuse to shop. I don't remember her buying Christmas gifts when we were with her but I do remember the big department stores downtown at Christmas. She also did a lot of catalog shopping. When my brother and I were in school I imagine she went shopping with my grandmother or her friend who both had cars.

I wrote about my Aunt Ruby while back. She would shop sales all year round and keep items on shelves in her basement. In October she'd go downstairs and pick out gifts for us and mail the package off. Mom would put the box in our basement until Christmas. It was hard waiting two months not knowing what was in those packages. She always wrapped her gifts in white tissue paper and I spied one of her gifts when I was going through old photos.
Christmas 1971

When I was in high school I worked for Cooks Dept. store and was able to shop for presents myself. Being able to buy gifts with money that I had earned made me feel like an adult. I would spend hours at the mall with my friends and pick things up as I could afford them.

I still love to give gifts but I'm not nearly as fond of shopping. This is the first year in recent memory that I didn't do the majority of my shopping online. There was a time when most of the shopping was done by Thanksgiving. With six grandkids to buy for now I'm not quite finished yet this year! I have just a couple of things to get tomorrow. For my kids I go the gift certificate route. The surprise is always where I'll decided to get them from as that changes each year. We also have six December birthdays to shop for and I always try to get them done first.

John and I will not shop for each other until after Christmas. We'll make a day of it on 26th and see what after Christmas bargains we can find.



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2 comments:

Miriam Robbins said...

You and John sound like Norm and I. We always give each other an assigned amount of money and hit the after-Christmas bargain sales and pick up a few things that were on our wish lists that we didn't get as gifts. It helps stretch the Christmas season out longer, and no disappointments that way!

Anonymous said...

I find that if you can find a good "family" gift, that takes off a lot pressure to find individual gifts. For instance, I just got the Limited Editiion Christmas Classics DVD set which has "Frosty the Snowman", "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer", "Santa Clause is coming to Town", and more. It also comes with a cute Holiday music cd that my kids adore. I work with the company, so I know how much these classic movies mean to families during the holidays. You can get the set anywhere they sell DVDs or at http://www.christmasclassics.tv. Family and togetherness is what the holidays are meant to remind us of, love is the most important thing in the world!