Careful Planning or Last Minute Panic?

 

What's better:  Planning your Christmas shopping and getting it done calmly and efficiently in the months, possibly several, leading up to Christmas or leaving it to the last minute and finishing the shopping in an adrenaline fuelled last minute scramble ending just as the store is closing?

Let us analyze.  Planning your shopping and executing it makes for a worry free Christmas.  It also probably means that you were able to stick to your budget and even if you didn't, you won't be facing a huge post Christmas credit card bill (like most of us).  You'll miss the crowded stores, the panic buying and dealing with salesclerks who've heard the same Christmas carol CD 20 times a day for more than 15 days in a row.  You will also have the ability to gloat whenever your friends, family and colleagues speak of their future shopping trips.  Of course, you don't have to gloat.  You could just smirk inwardly.

If you choose the last minute option you will have compacted the time you spent in the mall to a bare minimum amount.  You will have saved a lot of time to use for other activities (like procrastination) and used a lot of effort over a short time rather than a small effort over a larger period of time.  You will also have received the aforementioned adrenaline rush.  One other thing that must not be overlooked is that you will have spent the Christmas season in a place that was decorated for Christmas, full of people doing stuff with Christmas in mind, and lots of music to remind you that its Christmas.  Outside of church, where else could you find that?

I guess I would really like to be the first person, but am more like the second person.  I know it is more effective to decide what to get each person, then leave the house and go get it.  In a perfect world...... (hopefully you can finish this sentence)

Wrapping Conundrum

Unwrapping is more fun than wrapping.  Okay.  No surprise there.  I am basically stating the obvious that people have known from time immemorial.  I just had to get it off my chest.  I also needed some way to start this blog entry.

It is the Christmas season, and with it comes presents.  This year I was tasked to buy a lot of stocking stuffers.  That was the easy part (I mean, can anyone say dollar store--though, there seem to be fewer and fewer things there that are still one dollar).  I had no problem amassing all the required items, and, if I do say so myself, managed to avoid anything too crappy or too tacky.  The only problem was what to do with the stuff--to wrap, or not to wrap.  Since the actual gift exchange was going to work somewhat differently, I decided to wrap.  I guess I feel that unwrapping is a fundamental part of Christmas.

When I lived in Japan, whenever I bought somebody a gift, I always asked the store to wrap it up.  This was great and it was free.  They did it easily, and it always looked great.  The best part was that it only took one piece of tape (usually a store sticker) to wrap it up.  One piece of tape.  Amazing.

If only I could do that.  Usually I have to fumble around, hoping that I have cut off the correct amount of paper, though I have either cut too much, or too little, or the angle is so askew that nothing will line up.  I usually have presents that look like they were wrapped by a guy wearing oven mitts and dark glasses in a dark room.

Normally, nobody complains, and the unwrapping takes mere seconds so any evidence is long gone.

On an environmental note, one person wrapped their gifts using recycled newspaper.  They looked better than mine, and saved money.  Kind of wish I had thought of that.