Ever since the wise men brought gifts to a not so baby Jesus back at the beginning of Christmases, gift giving has been an important part of the holiday season. Now for years out of time immemorial, gifts were usually handmade and created by the giver or at least traded for. Gift shopping as we recognize it didn’t exist. Eventually, that all changed with the rise of commercialism and merchandising until we reached the state we are in today when Christmas shopping is the keystone of many retailers’ budgets for the year, and the “holiday season” begins closer and closer to Halloween, if not earlier since I saw Christmas displays out at Cracker Barrel alongside witches and black cats this year.

I have been part of Christmas shopping throughout my life and I have noticed some serious changes over the years. I started in-store Christmas shopping with my Aunt Cathy when I was big enough to keep up with her in the stores. Now Aunt Cathy was not one to shop early. As a wag once put it in a comedy routine, Aunt Cathy liked to wait until Mary’s water broke to go shopping. As a result, more than once, she and I would be out on Christmas Eve looking for her last minute gifts for the family. She also loves to remind me to this day how she sought far and wide for Star Wars figures and play sets the year the movie came out. Oh how I wish I’d left those in their original packaging.

I also shopped with Mama for Christmas. Back then, it wasn’t unusual for her to start shopping in September because almost all the Christmas gifts would spend some amount of time on “lay-away” at K-Mart or Sky City. Lay-away, for the younger readers I may have, was a type of buy on time arrangement where one would gather up all the treasures destined for the tree into a shopping cart which then got pushed to the “lay-away department” of the store. Once there, a down payment of a certain percentage got put on the merchandise. Then, each successive paycheck until the week before Christmas, you would come in and pay some on what you had on “lay-away.” It was a time honored tradition that sadly has gone the way of the dodo bird in today’s modern retail landscape. For a time though, it shined as a way to get presents for everyone while living from paycheck to paycheck. One interesting thing about lay-away was you often forgot exactly what you had on lay-away so making the final payment and collecting your booty was as exciting for you as it would be for the people the presents were destined for.

Mama moved away from lay-away with Palmetto Bank’s launch of the Christmas Club. This was a novel savings account where, starting in January, Mama would deposit a set amount of each paycheck into the Christmas Club account. The money would grow week by week throughout the year as more was added. Then, the week of Thanksgiving, Mama and the rest of the Christmas Club members would withdraw their funds with a little interest to boot in time for the yearly pandemonium known as Black Friday.

Ah, Black Friday. Honestly, it doesn’t mean much anymore. So-called Black Friday sales begin weeks before the Friday after Thanksgiving. Not much is left to go on sale anymore. There was a time, though, when Black Friday was an exercise in danger and deceit second to none. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, you would pick a newspaper up with all the sales flyers for the various stores. Then, you would spread the flyers out on the table at home and you and your loved ones would plan out your attack.

For many years, Black Friday itself was a riotous event. Sales would begin at 4:00 AM with the doorbusters for the day. Hordes of people would line up outside the mall and the Wal-mart waiting the chance to charge the doors to be the first to get to the item they coveted. That’s if they weren’t one of the hardy breed who had been camped outside the store for a few days to get the best place in line. I know it sounds insane to read about, but my goodness, you had to be there. See, each store only carried two or three, maybe ten at most, of the biggest ticket items like TVs and Tickle Me Elmoes in the store. A lot more than ten people wanted those items.

Every year, the news would have coverage of people being sent to the hospital because they had been trampled in the crush to get in the doors. Also, it wasn’t unusual to see several fistfights in the parking lots between seventy and eighty year old women contesting the purchase of something the other wanted. Here’s just an example: one year in my childhood, the Cabbage Patch Doll was the item of the season. Parents were rabid about securing one of these ugly cloth dolls with a fake birth certificate for their children. Store crew members had to be stationed where the dolls were kept to referee the bloodsport taking place as the dolls flew off the shelves. Grown women were ripping these dolls away from each other so their daughter could have one. It was so bad, news agencies were warning parents not to let their children take the dolls out to play before Christmas because people were stopping on the side of the road to snatch dolls from little kids’ arms. It was crazy.

Budge and I took place in some Black Friday craziness for a few years. We lined up outside Wal-mart before dawn to be early into the store. We got a few good deals, but truthfully, we were more there to people watch than to actually get any “have to” items. We’d watch the craziness around us until about nine o’clock, then we’d go to the nearest Waffle House to eat breakfast. We haven’t done that in years though. It was just too crazy.

Things got even crazier when, several years ago, stores started opening on Thanksgiving Day, but you couldn’t buy anything until midnight of Black Friday. What happened then was surreal. Huge pallets of something like DVD players would be dropped all over the store to spread out the madness. Those DVD players might be in the frozen food section, while the toy of the year was in the sporting goods aisle. Then, at the stroke of midnight, a store worker would slit the plastic wrapping the pallets and the frenzy would begin. Again, fistfights were common as people who had been standing with their hands on a DVD player since 8:00 had it ripped away by some johnny come lately. Thankfully, that madness ended with the COVID pandemic. Stores no longer opened on Thanksgiving Day and even when the pandemic was deemed over, the idea of giving workers time off shockingly stuck around. Even Wal-mart is closed on Thanksgiving these days.

Now, all that madness is obsolete. Budge and I haven’t been out for a present in five years or more. Our secret? Not really a secret, but ONLINE SHOPPING! It is the greatest. As we’ve gotten older, neither one of us likes a big crowd so sitting at home behind a laptop in a cyberstore is fantastic. Since we only buy for each other, it does cause problems with trying to keep stuff hidden from the other. Each of us has the gifts for the other sent here to the house. It makes things interesting. Still, online is the only way to go. I have all Budge’s presents hidden in the house ready to give to her on Christmas Day and never had to go anywhere! All my presents are piled up on her side of the bedroom and I am forbidden to touch anything under pain of eyebrow hairs being plucked.

So Merry Christmas to you all, and I hope you get those last minute gifts bought with either a run to the late sales at the store, or some overnight shipping from online. In any event, love y’all, and keep those feet clean. See you in the new year.