I’m 80% done with my Christmas shopping. On September 27.
I’ve always thought that shopping for Christmas gifts for people was an activity that was part of the Christmas season (or, for me, the Advent season). And I guess in theory that’s true. But the problem is that I end up getting stressed and getting people things I’m not truly happy with and spending more money than I should. Especially since two of my favorite people have birthdays within two weeks of Christmas, so I end up giving them either a lame Christmas gift or a lame birthday gift or both.
So this year I thought I’d try something new: When I came across something I thought someone would like, I bought it for Christmas.
I bought my first thing for my brother in March. In August I made a list of what I had, and discovered I was about halfway done. Today I’m about 80% done (including the two January birthdays!), if you count the project I’m knitting right now and will finish within the next day or two.
I even have fitting gifts for the hard-to-buy-for people on my list, and that makes me feel relieved. Stress-free. Clever. Maybe even a little bit smug.
I’m leaving that remaining 20% for the toys my kids see and want right before Christmas, or for last-minute things.
Now I’ll spend the next three months knitting for myself, making up new recipes, reading Henri Nouwen, and waiting for the arrival of Baby Jesus, knowing that the Things aspect of Christmas is already taken care of.
Madness, genius, or a little bit of both?
Magda Pecsenye runs Christmased.com and AskMoxie.org. Contrary to popular belief, she is in no way organized.
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See, for me, I need the stress of the last minute. If I don’t have the time pressure, I waffle too much on what to buy for people. I second-guess myself, and nothing seems right. But on December 23, there’s no more time to overthink it: That electric nose hair trimmer is the perfect gift for your mailman.
Genius. I’ve been buying things here and there as I think of gifts people would enjoy, but I’m not that good of thinking up gift ideas, so I still have a lot of buying left to do. But I would love to have nothing left to buy except a toy for my kiddo and a few gift-exchange presents come December.
The question is, will you be able to remember all the things you got (probably yes, since you made a list) and where you hid them?
I’ve solved some of the issue by reducing the number of people with whom I exchange gifts, and then further reduced the shopping by opting to give magazine subscriptions and/or art supplies to my nieces and nephews.
If I had a larger freezer, I might be convinced to start the holiday baking earlier this year.
Julia, knowing what I bought and where it is is the key, isn’t it? And I think why this plan has failed in years past. This year I put everything all in the same place, and made a list. If that doesn’t make it work I’ll give up and just hand everyone cash next year.
Awesome. I”m usually wrapping up about now, but I’ve been pretty stressed about this trip (which is going swimmingly, thank you). Once I’m home from Italy, I’ll be able to finish things up.
Genius, I think.
I start a Christmas Spreadsheet every year around the start of November, and I start planning who I am going to shop for and what I am going to get. Then on Black Friday I do 90% of my shopping online and just have it shipped to my door. (I wrote a post on it a while back: http://www.oipom.com/2010/11/16/holiday-shopping-tactics/ ) It works REMARKABLY well for me and I recommend it to a lot of people.
I do like the idea of just buying the stuff whenever you find the perfect gift though; I suppose for the stuff I buy there’s not a lot of actual Black Friday sales (no expensive electronics, etc.) so there’s no real reason to do all the shopping then…
Madness.
We tried that last year and ended up spending twice as much. Besides continuing to spend after all the presents were bought, the kicker was when [boy] asked Santa for a big present in mid-December that we had not planned for. He had even crossed it off his list.
This year, we will go for mad panic in December — which is another form of madness.