The Holiday season is arguably the best time of the year, between the holiday music, decorations, and overload of Christmas related scents; there truly is no happier time of year. However, along with the season comes the seemingly never-ending holiday shopping. I can start off the season planning on buying about five people gifts, and then somehow it’s like I adopted an entire tribe of children and I’m somehow shopping for 25 different people on a budget of about $46. On top of having to think about what to get each and every person on your shopping list, you have to trek out to the malls, which are an absolute mad house and more than likely are sold out of everything that you wanted to buy. I know I’m not the only one who has a love/hate relationship with holiday shopping, so here is some insight into how this process usually works.
After spending countless house watching ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas (which might as well have been on since Halloween), you decide it's time to get off your lazy ass and start shopping for your loved ones. After seeing them go back and forth from the mall, you can only assume they’ve put in so much time and effort into getting you the best possible present. Naturally, this stresses you out because you’re left with less time to plan than them, and you need your gift to be equally as awesome, if not better than theirs. You make your way to the mall, sitting in endless traffic somehow unable to avoid Mariah Carey’s Christmas album on the radio. (God, if I hear that sh*t one more time!) You haven’t even made it into the mall yet, but have made about 13 enemies in the parking lot, finding a spot during this season is equivalent to finding a f*cking pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. After a half hour of scouring the parking lot, you eventually decide to park in handicapped and walk out of your car “Like a pimp, with an old school limp.”
Upon entering the mall, you are almost trampled by four young children whose parents felt it was appropriate to let them run free through the mall. Attention parents: this isn’t the Gymboree; I don’t need to worry about your disheveled child breathing on me while I’m trying to buy some Auntie Anne’s. Anyway, you continue your trek into the depths of the mall, somehow finally making it to J.Crew because your brother needs some new button downs. “Oh you need that in a medium? Sorry we only have XXL and XS left.” This becomes the only thing you hear at countless stores, over and over again. Like sure, let me just purchase this $150 XXL cashmere sweater for my father, this way if he ever feels like drowning in some fabric, he can throw this on.
After being completely shut down at every reputable clothing store, because apparently you are too average sized to shop for, you decide it's time to think about getting tech gifts for the fam. Your sister wants the new Apple TV? Great, they have to have a bunch of those at Best Buy, so you think. After leaving the mall, you head on over to Best Buy thinking you might have better luck there. Boy, were you wrong. Upon arrival, you see two middle-aged women fighting over a 42” Panasonic TV, and naturally you can’t help but watch until the cops are called. OK, time to get what we came here for. You ask a worker where you can find the Apple TV only for him to tell you that he just sold the last one to the woman next to you. You turn around, somehow both looking up at each other at the same time, instantly becoming enemies. Unfortunately, since it is frowned upon to fight a 65-year-old woman, you decide to call it a day and head home with nothing to show for your long day of shopping.
Mentally and physically exhausted, you plop down on the couch and miraculously end up watching the 25 Days of Christmas again (I will watch "Elf" every day until I die). You manage to make it home with less money in your budget than you had before because you needed to have pretzels at the mall. (God forbid you turn down food.) If you’re anything like me, at this point you decide your entire family is getting a bar of chocolate for Christmas. (Hershey’s of course, you can’t afford that Godiva sh*t.) Christmas isn’t that glamorous when you’re ballin' on a budget.
That being said, there is a love/hate relationship with holiday shopping, as there is no better feeling than giving someone an awesome Christmas present, no matter how long it took to find it. Here’s hoping you don’t get trampled in a Wal-Mart this holiday season. Happy shopping!
