By Marc Wollin
You've made it through Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. You scrolled around between the stuffing and the game on Turkey Thursday, likewise between leftovers and the game on No Cute Name Sunday. And in spite of all of those opportunities to get out there and do your duty as an American consumer, you probably still haven’t started to spend money like a drunken sailor on your holiday shopping.
Well, you better get going.
Because of a quirk in the calendar, Thanksgiving came late this year, with its legally mandated fourth Thursday of the month placement backed into a corner among the last days of the term. Christmas, on the other hand, is the usually immovable object it always is, with a date certain of Dec. 25. That means that this holiday shopping season is tied for the shortest in 20 years, with only 27 days from kickoff to Santa shimmying down your chimney. That’s five days shorter than last year, so you are behind before you even begin.
Added to the shorter time period is that these days everybody just buys whatever they want whenever they want. Blame the smorgasbord of shopping apps from major online and physical retailers that went from convenient options to embedded lifestyle choices during the pandemic. Add to that Temu, Shein, TikTok Shop and Amazon Haul, all offering goods at cheap prices and encouraging people to gift themselves early and often.
So whereas in before times someone might have mentioned they were hoping for a new scarf or water bottle or charging stand under the tree, now they just click “buy” on Tuesday and it’s delivered on Thursday, with the only holiday in sight being National Apple Day.
All that means there is less time to shop for others and less options from which to choose. Once again that annual question bubbles to the surface: What to get that special someone, a gift that will be more likely to make their eyes light up with joy — and less likely their phones light up with return codes.
As always there is no shortage of help, even if the curation level seems to have slipped. It used to be lists were made of careful selections and headlined “Top 5 Gifts” or “Best 10 Presents.” Now it seems there is a faint whiff of desperation, a “throw it against the wall and see what sticks” quality about many of them.
How else to explain Esquire publishing “44 Best Gift Ideas for Your Girlfriend in 2024” and “54 Gifts for Men Our Editors Recommend.” Real Simple has “The 67 Best Christmas Gifts of 2024,” while CNN offered “The 77 Best Christmas Gift Ideas of 2024 for All Your Favorite People.” And Popular Mechanics bows to reality (and round numbers) with “The 100 Best Amazon Gifts Under $100 for a Prime Holiday Season.”
Why not just provide a link to the Google Chrome home page and call it a day?
The lists themselves generally target specific demographics, be it spouses, co-workers or kids. But they also get more niche than that. There are lists for hikers (LonoLife Thai Curry Beef Bone Broth Powder, pack of 10), cannabis enthusiasts (“The Art of Weed Butter” cookbook) and Beyoncé fans (a Cowboy Carter incense holder). And then there’s New York Magazine’s “25 Red Gifts” for people who, well, like red.
While scanning those registers might indeed net you something that calls out, it also seems that there is a lot of stuff that’s filler, not killer. Ursa Major Morning Mojo Bar Soap for Men is surely super special, but it’s just a bar of soap. A Jargon Generator, consisting of three rotating, connected and inscribed wooden barrels, enables you to create phrases such as “align stakeholders synergistically” effortlessly. Cute, perhaps, but for $50? Then there’s VIO2 Mouth Tape, pack of 48, to tape one's mouth shut at night to either stop a person from snoring and/or to kill them, your choice. (Query: assuming this is for your significant other, is this really a self-gift after all?)
You just gotta keep at it. Maybe a set of hamster earrings or an Eiffel Tower biscuit cutter or fish-shaped lemon squeezer isn’t the right thing, but something else might pop up. All it takes is endless scrolling and clicking and scrolling again. Don’t give up: there’s a Bluetooth toothbrush just sitting there waiting for you to snap it up.
Marc Wollin of Bedford is starting to plan to start shopping. Soon. His column appears weekly via email and online on Blogspot and Substack as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.