No, of course I haven’t started my Christmas shopping.
Although technically that may no longer be true.
This column is due Thursday afternoon, and though I find it difficult to believe that I summoned up the mental fortitude required to enter a store and spend money before the next-to-last possible moment, it’s certainly possible that I somehow managed to purchase one or two Christmas presents by this morning. Possible, but highly unlikely. And so I predict that right now, as many of you are reading this, I am still wondering how I am going to squeeze everything I want to do before Christmas into the next few days.
There’s the Andy Warhol exhibit at the University at Albany, which ends Sunday, and a Christmas party Saturday night, and the knitting group on Sunday night, plus a visit from an out-of-town friend, plans to try the hot toddy recipe we ran on The Gazette’s food blog a while back and, if it really does snow, cross-country skiing. Not to mention the 90 or so Christmas cards I need to write. How can I do all this stuff, I ask, and still find time to buy Christmas presents? I’ve already made one sacrifice: I’ve decided not to go to the movies this week.
As a reporter, I’m accustomed to deadlines, and in some ways I regard Dec. 24 as just another deadline. It’s a deadline I’ve always met before, and I’m fairly confident that I can meet it again, although this is around the time when I begin to seriously entertain the notion of doing all of my Christmas shopping at La Gioia, the deli in Schenectady where I often buy lunch. I mean, there are all sorts of great things at La Gioia. Wouldn’t my mom like a nice bottle of olive oil? A jar of capers? A plastic container full of artichoke salad? We Fosses do like to eat.
I’ve never, ever done my Christmas shopping early.
In college, I would wait until I returned to New Hampshire, where there was no sales tax. This usually meant running around in a state of near-panic on Christmas Eve, but in some ways I enjoyed this. The thing is, it’s a bit of a rush to walk into a store on Dec. 24th with absolutely no idea what you’re going to give your loved ones, and walk out a few hours later with bags filled with presents. Of course, then you have to wrap all these gifts, which I generally like to do around 1 a.m. on Christmas morning.
I no longer go to New Hampshire to do all my Christmas shopping, but I still find it impossible to start buying gifts any earlier than the weekend before Christmas. The one thing that’s changed is that, as I get older, I’ve started to feel a little guilty about my haphazard approach to gift buying. I like my family, and I don’t want to buy them a bunch of junk. Plus, they’re always so nice to me. I wasn’t even allowed to return to Albany after Thanksgiving without first presenting my mother with a Christmas list.
There was a time, when I was in my mid-20s, when my parents and aunt and uncle would express great astonishment whenever they opened a gift from me or my sisters or our cousins. “Wow!” they’d exclaim, as they examined the perfectly normal and unimpressive present they’d just unwrapped — a candle, say, or a winter hat — “This is so nice!”
It was as if they simply could not believe that the children who had once given them handmade crafts for Christmas were capable of exchanging such grown-up gifts.
Unfortunately, those days are over. My family seems to have come around to the idea that I really am a grown-up, after all. And so there’s no avoiding this Christmas shopping.
I try to start thinking about gifts at least two weeks before I actually go shopping. I make a list of stores to go to — stores that sell the sorts of things my relatives like — and develop a rough itinerary. Basically, it involves stopping at a bookstore, where I can take care of at least half my shopping, and then hitting a hodgepodge of local retailers. The one thing I refuse to do is set foot in a shopping mall because, you know, that’s just crazy.
At this point, I’ve accepted that I am never going to be one of those people who get all their Christmas shopping done early, or who do it online. I’m aware that those people exist, and I’m sort of in awe of them. Sometimes I even wish I could be one of them. But that’s not my style, and it’s never going to be. I work on deadline, and I always have.
And so this weekend I will spring into action.
Of course, something may have to give. There may not be time for hot toddies, or Andy Warhol. In addition to forgoing the movies, I may have to make a couple more sacrifices. But I like my family, and so maybe that’s a small price to pay.
Foss Forward makes a weekly appearance in print, in the Gazette’s Saturday Lifestyle section.
