The pressure is on, are you ready for Christmas?
- col-teri-stein
- November 2, 2023
- 1243
As I’m writing this, it is still October, and we’ve already watched two weekends of new Christmas movies that have all had happy endings. Thank goodness because if you’ve checked the news lately, there are not too many of those in real life. For me, if you’re going to watch something to escape, it’s got to have a happy ending.
We were already behind on watching the movies on the main Christmas movie channel when we discovered two other channels we watch had already started their holiday movies early too. Now we are really behind on our Christmas movie viewing. But one good thing about all this starting early is it gets me thinking about what I need to do to get ready for the holidays.
My sister is totally organized on Christmas. I need to be more like her. She sometimes starts shopping in June, and by Thanksgiving she has all her Christmas cards written, stamped and ready to put in the mail. She’s probably done with her shopping for the year or very close by now.
For me, most years, I’m hoping to sit down and address those cards so they’ll arrive in the Christmas Eve mail. Even one day later, the day after Christmas, is acceptable too. Just once I’d like to have my cards done by Thanksgiving — but maybe next year. There are too many Christmas movies to enjoy.
Retailers have started early with Christmas promotions this year too. And many of the big box stores have announced they are going to be closed on Thanksgiving. As someone who has lived through the Black Friday madness of the past few decades, this is a welcome change.
Black Friday sales, which used to begin at a decent hour, meaning it was daylight, quickly morphed into a competition between retailers with stores opening at indecent hours of the late night and early morning and stores even opening on Thanksgiving Day for special holiday sales.
When our area mall was at its peak, this meant you could get a sandwich, French fries and ice-cold soda at 6 a.m. on Black Friday and the food court tables were full of people enjoying a meal.
We were once swept up in the madness ourselves — Joe and I, that is, not my organized sister.
We developed a plan of attack for shopping the stores that opened early. Changing out of pajamas at 3:30 a.m. was too time consuming. Sleeping in your clothes was the only way to roll out of bed and get to a store by 4 a.m. There were long lines of people waiting to get in, so getting in line at least an hour early was key. We occasionally had to split up to be able to get to a can’t miss sale.
One time two different stores had items we wanted, and they were opening at two different times before sunrise. Joe and I split up. Items were limited, and if you didn’t get in line before they ran out, you were out of luck.
The competition was real. Fights over sale items made the news, but fortunately, they were not from our area.
The community was real too. One extremely frosty morning, several shoppers had managed to snag a close parking spot near the front of the store. They invited us to take turns sitting in the car while having friendly conversation and getting warm as we waited for the store to open.
We always went out for breakfast at about 11 a.m. after all that shopping — another good memory.
One year Joe and I outdid ourselves. We started at our area mall, traveled to Canton to visit another mall and then to St. Clairsville for the third mall of the day. A trip like that would kill us now. Thankfully, the rise of internet shopping saved all of us reluctant early birds because retailers put their same Black Friday offers online.
Shopping among the masses was a wonderful way to kick off the holiday season and spread smiles and good cheer. It brings back great memories. But everything changes. Stores no longer have those insanely early Black Friday hours, but even if they did, we’re sleeping in.