On one end of the mall bench sat an exhausted Nicole Dellow, heavy shopping bags plunked down beside her from a fruitful day of Christmas shopping.
One the other end was her friend, Kristina Smythe, with just one small bag and a bit of that holiday smugness procrastinators love to hate.
Dellow, 25, did “basically almost all” her shopping Sunday at London’s White Oaks Mall on the last frenzied shopping weekend before the big day.
Smythe, 27, was there for moral support only. She did her shopping weeks ago and already has it under the tree.
The two London women can count themselves lucky: One in four Canadian shoppers didn’t have their spending done until this past weekend, an Ipsos Loyalty poll found. And 3% won’t finish until Christmas Eve, meaning they’ll pay by having to brave the legions of other last-minute shoppers.
Nationwide, malls were jammed the last weekend before the holiday, typically one of the busiest on the retail calendar.
Heading into Sunday, Dellow had a lot of ground to make up: She’d only bought for her three-year-old son, but had about eight other people to buy for — not counting her husband’s family. That was his job, she said.
She started at noon and had it wrapped up almost five hours later.
“The dollar store was ridiculous,” Dellow said when she lined up to pay for stocking stuffers.
Dellow said she really, really meant to start earlier. “I’m a procrastinator,” she said, with resignation.
Her good intentions were snowed under by the big storms last week that clobbered the London area. Then she got sick. Then her son got sick.
And then it was the last full weekend before Christmas.
Smythe, on the other hand, played it cool. She bought herself a shirt Sunday with the knowledge all the frantic people around her were looking for stuff to give other people.
“Technically, I didn’t have to be here,” she said.
“I didn’t have to stand in
huge lines when everybody else has to. I got it all done, I’m not panicking, I’m just getting my stuff done. It’s wrapped and you guys are all scurrying around like, ‘What am I going to get?’”
Dunc Morrison of West Elgin had settled in on a mall bench, waiting for his wife to finish up the last details.
“Traditions go on,” he said.
Andrea Galizia, 15, was one of three teens who arrived at the mall late Sunday to start their shopping.
She said her sister had trouble finding a parking space and had to follow finished shoppers to their cars to snag a spot.
jane.sims@sunmedia.ca
twitter.com/JaneatLFPress
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php
Five Filters featured site: So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?.
No comments:
Post a Comment