Thoughts on Christmas shopping

So I think I’m finished most of my Christmas shopping. (Although, perhaps unwisely, I will probably continue to buy things for the next week or so at least. Stop me before I shop again!)

1230 pm

What’s interesting to me is not so much that I’m pretty much done two weeks before Christmas (remember, I’m an inveterate procrastinator) but that for the first time this year I think I did more online shopping than bricks-and-mortar store shopping. The only mall I visited was the Rideau Centre, and even that was very task-oriented: I knew what I wanted, I went in to one store, I got it. No endless hours of browsing and agonizing over the choices. I gotta say, I like this much better! And you know what I really love? Watching the parcel tracking online! I swear, shipment tracking is like NORAD’s Santa tracking for grown-ups – I check on all my deliveries at least once a day and love watching them leapfrog across the country to me!

It was only in 2007, the Christmas I was hugely pregnant with Lucas, that I did the first of my Christmas shopping online. Hard to believe it took only five short years for the online shopping to eclipse the mall wandering! With the conveniece of free shipping and an ever-greater selection of stores and merchandise, it just didn’t seem necessary to brave the crowds this year. I did do one particularly big blitz at Indigo kids, but with armed with a 20% off coupon and a store literally across the street from my office, that was none too painful either.

Choosing gifts has always been a meaningful task for me. As in, it’s very important for me to choose just the perfect gift for the people closest to me. I don’t want to steal Santa’s thunder or let the cat out of the Christmas sack, so I can’t tell you exactly what I found online, but let’s just say that 10 minutes on Google is a lot more productive than driving around to half a dozen specialty stores in search of the perfect gift!

Beloved, on the other hand, is not much of an online shopper. Then again, he also doesn’t live with one hand on the keyboard like I seem to do. What about you? Are you an online shopping junkie? Care to share a few tips on snagging a good deal online? Or are you still circling the parking lot, trying to get into the mall before it goes REALLY crazy next week?

Author: DaniGirl

Canadian. storyteller, photographer, mom to 3. Professional dilettante.

4 thoughts on “Thoughts on Christmas shopping”

  1. We did soooo much online shopping this year. I think I only went into ONE STORE. Love it. So much easier than trying to shop with four kids in tow and try to secretly buy things when they’re not watching.

  2. I do the vast majority of our family shopping, and I only made one (very brief) mall stop and one Chapters/Indigo stop this year. The rest was all done at small local retailers, online or at craft sales. We’ve also handmade quite a few gifts this year!

  3. I’m the one that does of the “Brick and Mortar” shopping around here. I love it, there’s nothing like a good browse through the stores. You never know when you are going to come across something that you didn’t think of. Online shopping is too overwhelming and you could spend too long “surfing” in the online stores. I like talking to strangers and seeing all the little babies out with the frantically shopping parents.

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