NFL
By: Rick O’Donnell
Let’s get it out of the way early. “Can we at least get through Halloween/Thanksgiving before we start thinking about Christmas?” There. Do ya feel better? Okay, let’s move on. Now that the end of the year is nearing, we’re hitting the holiday rush with Christmas being the anchor. Year in and year out people stress themselves out during the holidays.
Whether you’re a person who starts planning Christmas the moment your kids go back to school or one of the ones who think the Christmas huggers need to slow their role shouldn’t matter. At the end of the day, your shopping habits for the holiday shouldn’t be deterred by wanting to celebrate the other holidays as well. Unless you are one of those hardcore decorators who plan haunted houses for kids in the neighborhood or an amateur chef who preps enough food to feed an army, Halloween and Thanksgiving prep can be done in 24 hours.
Christmas on the other hand is a prolonged affair. The shopping, the gift wrapping, the travel, the food prep, and the much-needed alcohol run to be able to deal with your siblings takes some planning. This is why people need to get started early.
If you’re in doubt, consider this. Everyone waits for Black Friday to shop for the holidays to get the best deals possible. Have you ever gone into a store the weeks before? Spoiler alert, there are sales everywhere. Stores put their biggest sellers on clearance to get rid of old stock to make room for the overflow of products they’re about to bring in for the holiday sales. I had this experience most recently at Target. I bought a kitchen mixer “on-sale” as a gift one week for $90, marked down from $100. A week later while shopping around for household essentials, I walked down the same aisle just window shopping for potential holiday gifts.
The same mixer was on clearance for $30. That’s 1/3 of what I paid for it, so of course I bought it as a gift for someone else. As I was browsing around, I saw the same yellow stickers throughout their appliances. Most of their kitchen items had markdown tags on them.
Continuing with the “window shopping”, I frequent the book section which is right by the toys and electronics. I have family members in those demographics so I continued to browse. Just as I thought. There were plenty of stickers on some of the toys and electronics as well. The three largest holiday gifts departments all had markdowns.
Now if that isn’t enough to sway your thinking, then the money of it should. Not only are there great deals before the holidays, but you have way more time to shop. Do you even realize how fantastic it is to not squeeze Christmas into the last two paychecks of the season? Of course, you’re stressed out. You’re trying to fit an entire holiday budget into one month. You’re setting yourself up to go into the new year broke with bills to pay. As someone who is fortunate enough to get a holiday bonus, let me tell you it’s nice to spend a little on myself for the holiday and not use it to finish out my shopping.
Once you have a head start, you can spend the extra time wrapping gifts or baking cookies with the kids. You don’t have to stand in crowded department stores with the stressed-out last-minute shoppers, wondering if everything has been picked through. You have peace of mind knowing you’re already done.
No one is ignoring Halloween or Christmas. Some people just enjoy having the head start to take the stress off the holiday. Not everyone wants to have their blood pressure through the roof. The holidays are way more exciting when you actually get time to relax and enjoy them then try to do everything last minute. Just by starting early, you can take your time to settle in for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas without the stress, well until your family shows up.
