Unfortunately, I’ve never been an early Christmas shopper. My mom, my sister and my sister in-law will pick up things in March that so-and-so will like for Christmas and store it away in a closet until they need it.
I, on the other hand, have actually gone out shopping on Christmas Eve. I know, shame on me. This is when it was just me and my ex, pre daughter. I even suggested that we don’t even do Christmas because it seemed like a waste of time and money. Since my daughter though, I take Christmas more seriously and just figured that I have enough to worry about Christmas Eve with preparing for Santa then to be scrambling around trying to shop as well.
Anyway, Christmas was the furthest thing from my mind. Imagine my horror when last week one of my editors said she’d be handing out the Holiday assignments this week.
What? How is that possible? I was just at the freakin beach last week, wasn’t I? And didn’t we just have Christmas like last month?
To add further panic and turmoil to my life, this is also around the same time I saw my first Christmas commercial of the year. I think it might have been Kmart, I’m not sure. The shock of it all must’ve frozen my brain.
Now that my brain has thawed a bit, I’ve realized that I have no money saved or random gifts laying around in wait. Granted, I don’t have many people to buy gifts for (singledom has its perks) and as I’ve said previously, my daughter’s still at the age that a lot of things can be found at Dollar stores or Dollar type stores. Unfortunately, I’m thinking this may be the last year for that. She still wants a Wii, by the way. But man, it would be nice if I had gifts already stored somewhere and money put away for Christmas.
In the past, I have always spent way too much on Christmas but this year with the problems I’ve been having with my credit cards and medical bills, I have considered starting earlier and trying to manage my spending better like the other fiscally intelligent shoppers in my family. Maybe if I buy a little at a time and spread it out over a few more months, it won’t be as painful.
Then, maybe I’ll even catch the after Christmas sales like all of the other savvy shoppers out there and start stocking up on Christmas stuff in January. You know, start 2010 out with a plan to match my plan.
Maybe. But this year, I’m not starting until I get those Holiday assignments from my editor. I refuse to think anymore about Christmas right now. It just doesn’t feel right.