The Benefits of Last-Minute Christmas Shopping

I'm not a big fan of Christmas shopping, or for that matter, shopping of any kind. Even moreso, I'm not a fan of last minute shopping, especially for Christmas. Call me a Scrooge. Call me antisocial. Call me anything you want. I just don't have much affection for shopping.

That is probably why God brought my wife into my life. She is a top-drawer shopping aficionado. And she has made effort to bring me into the shopping aficionado ranks.

Wouldn't you know that I ended up joining my wife on Christmas Eve 2007 for a round of last minute Christmas shopping. What warrants mentioning is that we had done no shopping at all for Christmas prior to this day. Yes, none, zero, zip, zilch. And not having Christmas gifts to present to our children, family, and friends was unacceptable, mostly to my wife but I'll admit to me as well, at least a little bit.

And not only did we have to purchase Christmas gifts, we also had to make food purchases for our Christmas meal. So we had to cram all our Christmas gift and food shopping into the final day. With early store closures on Christmas Eve looming, we had our shopping work cut out for us. But let me say that not only did we get this all done, we ended up having a nice Christmas.

No, I do not advise this wait-to-the-last minute strategy for all people, but there are some benefits of last minute Christmas shopping.

Benefit 1: Price savings. One benefit of waiting to the last possible day and last possible minutes of the last possible day for Christmas shopping were some big price savings. Everywhere we went, there were signs advertising 10 to 70 percent off of regular prices. One place we shopped was the largest shopping center in Hawaii, Ala Moana and every store we went into from Macy's to Sears to the Disney Store, there were last minute Christmas shopping deals to be had. The Disney Store had a 70% off sale. Not surprisingly, the lines were long there. My wife and I passed on purchasing things at the Disney Store. We had time working against us.

Benefit 2: Smaller than expected crowds. I had expected a nightmarish scenario of long lines, gridlocked parking lots, and irate customers and clerks. What we found instead were a surprisingly sparse number of shoppers at Ala Moana and at Costco where we did our food shopping and at the Mililani Walmart. Of course, our experience may not mirror what happened at shopping locations in other cities in the United States, but I'd be willing to wager that it might be. What say you all?

Benefit 3: Unity. A great benefit of our last minute Christmas shopping blitz was increased unity between my wife and me. I'll admit, I expected us to be at each other's throats for most of the day due to the stress of our last minute scrambling around. Instead, we found ourselves working together to accomplish what we needed to get done. It was like we were going to battle against the rest of the last-minute shopping masses and we had to rally together to get that done. And we did rally together. Amazing.

Yes, conventional wisdom says to plan and shop early for Christmas. However, benefits of last minute shopping do exist. Consider giving it a try.