When you think of Thanksgiving, there are two types of people who come to mind: those ready to scarf down some turkey and enjoy family time at the dinner table, and those who are already organizing their deals and coupons for Black Friday the next morning (or as early as post-Thanksgiving dinner). And so it goes that these are the two types of holiday shoppers. The shoppers who thrive on the holiday season—this season of spending, and then there are the others, the non-shoppers.
The non-shoppers are a group of people with various reasons for avoiding malls and shopping centers during the holiday season. Perhaps they cannot stand shopping at any time of the year because malls are overwhelming and crowds make their skin crawl. This sect of shopping “haters” opts for online shopping. Then there are always those friends you have whose mothers dragged them to every Nordstrom’s semi-annual sale in their lifetime, which burnt them out on shopping long ago. Never will they feel the need to drop any amount of money on anything that isn’t absolutely necessary to their well-being. Some people despise holiday shopping because after learning about capitalism in economics, they realized that American shopping habits make them sick. Though they will ironically tweet from their iPhone 6s about their hatred of the Christmas consumer culture, they’re going to feel guilty about whether or not they should get their mother a present.
In stark contrast are the shopaholics, the true holiday shoppers. This is a breed of people like myself, who not only enjoy gift shopping for others, but get a rush from any act of spending money. You don’t know this feeling until you beg your mom to let you go grocery shopping for her, and come out of Vons with a smile on your face because you got to charge $43.67 to her rewards card. In this case, Christmas shopping is just an excuse to unload some serious money because you are spending that money on other people as opposed to yourself.
Holiday shopper tendencies vary. On the moderate side of the scale, they plan the gifts they are giving in advance, and how they will execute these plans. They come off as efficient and savvy shoppers who have the innate ability to stomach crowds and patiently wait for super-mall parking spots. More extreme holiday shoppers have all these natural instincts and more. They come born with solid mental math abilities, and keep tabs on gift ideas year round. Extreme holiday shoppers have a sense of bargain shopping and are always looking for the best deals. This skill allows them to feel better about the massive amount of money they are spending. They justify with nonsensical logic, like, “I saved $3.00 on this Bath and Body Works lotion gift package, which means I can afford to buy my second cousin a Michael Kors wallet.” It doesn’t make sense to anyone else but them, and doesn’t matter anyway, because no matter how strong their basic math skills are, they know how much they’re really spending, yet they remain numb to those climbing numbers.
What defines a true holiday shopper is their state of awareness — awareness of large sums depleting their bank account, but even with the weight of this knowledge, they neither think, nor care to stop. At any other time of year, these habits would be worthy of an intervention, but as soon as Thanksgiving day ends and Black Friday begins, it all becomes okay. In a way, it might be somewhat selfless to be willing to spend so much for other peoples’ sake. For those who don’t care to share in the holiday spending spirit, there is always the option to exploit the inclinations of shopaholics, and hire them to shop for gifts for you.
