Reformed December 23 Shoppers UNITE!

You know...I think I am starting to like this new outlook on this blog.  It started off with YOU NEVER NOVEMBER WHAT YOU'RE GONNA GET month, and now I am thinking of making it a permanent thing.  I am beginning to feel like I am refreshed, and ready to take on the world now.

Well, at least as far as writing goes, anyway.

And with my new focus set in place, it now allows me to put my focus on other things in life.

Like Christmas shopping!

So, admit it.  With only 37 days left until Christmas, who has their shopping finished already?  Who has part of it completed?  Who hasn't even started it yet?

Well, I can personally say that as of November 17, 2014, my Christmas list is one hundred per cent completed!  I believe that this is the earliest I have ever completed holiday shopping, and I am so glad that I got my act together this year!

Of course, it wasn't always this way.  Truth be told, I used to be one of those "December 23" shoppers.  And, looking back on it, I really don't know what I was thinking!

Now, granted, a lot of the reason why I had to wait until just a couple of days before Christmas to do my shopping was because of a lack of money.  I usually had to wait until I got paid from a job, or when I was really young, I had to wait until my parents got paid before I was given my holiday allowance for gifts.  Oh, sure, I could have made gifts if I didn't have the money for them, but at the age of eight, I just didn't have as much creativity as I have now.

(Truth be told, I am very jealous of you artisans who can knit sweaters, paint pictures, and create all sorts of crafty things.  I wish I could do that!)

Anyway, another reason why I waited to do my Christmas shopping until December 23 was because of the fact that I really didn't like doing the whole shopping thing when I was younger.  In fact, I would have rather spent my free time playing video games, watching television, or heaven forbid even doing homework than spend any time at the mall.

I absolutely hated stores and malls and other places that sold things when I was a little kid.  I didn't like the fact that my mom and sisters seemed to take FOREVER inside of stores.  And I certainly felt frustrated being in stores where you wanted to buy everything in the toy department, but had no money to do so. 

What can I say?  I was a kid. 

So, I decided to shop closer to Christmas to put off going to the mall until I absolutely had to, thinking that it was the best method to get ready for the holidays.

And it was, for about the first fifteen or so years that I began buying my own gifts (which would be from about age 8-23).

You see, at age 23, I began my current job.  And as many of you know, I work in a retail setting. 

This is going to be my eleventh holiday season in retail (I began my job just before Christmas 2004), and in that amount of time, I have quickly shifted my opinion in terms of holiday shopping.

My new motto is "get it done as soon as possible"!

It did take a couple of years for me to break out of my December 23 haze.  I did initially do my shopping the last week before Christmas when I was new to retail.  But it didn't take me long to realize that waiting until the last minute to do Christmas shopping just didn't make sense to me.

For one, it becomes harder to check things off your list when store shelves are completely empty.  And chances are if you have ever tried to do all your shopping on Christmas Eve, there is a good chance that all of the hottest gifts were already bought some weeks earlier.  And after hearing so many people accuse me of destroying their Christmas because we ran out of a certain item, I decided that I would do all my shopping before December, so that I could be guaranteed to have everything on my list.

Another thing I have noticed about doing holiday shopping a month before Christmas is the fact that malls and stores aren't nearly as crowded.  You can go to practically any store in the world and not wait in line.  And, even better...you can avoid the claustrophobic feeling that a lot of people feel when they try to navigate their way through clogged aisles.  Believe me, it is much easier to shop a store when you can breathe!

All in all, shopping for Christmas in November just makes more sense to me.  Because getting all of my shopping finished before Black Friday gives me my own personal satisfaction that I achieved something.  And it also eliminates all the stress that comes out of gift-giving because I can now sit back and enjoy the holidays instead of being a gigantic ball of tinsel covered stress two days before the twenty-fifth.  Believe me, that is an early Christmas gift to myself.  Who doesn't want a stress free holiday?

Regardless of what your shopping plans are, I hope they are best for you.

In the meantime, I have some wrapping to do.  I'll see you tomorrow for the weekly Tuesday Timeline!