Wonder in window shopping

James Clements
Published: December 1, 2008

I hope you enjoyed your holiday weekend. Maybe you pulled out the house lights and yard moose with “realistic grazing head movement,” or you ate enough turkey and pie to give a perverse irony to the reminder to “save room for stuffing.”

If you’re like me, you probably gave thanks for 30 or more hours of football on television.  But while we enjoyed all of these pastimes and more, Christmas morning came early for a few of us this year.

Those who braved frigid mall parking lots in the wee hours of Friday morning just so they could singlehandedly keep our economy afloat (or maybe they just really wanted that set of $4 embroidered dish towels) got to experience something the rest of us haven’t since childhood.

They got to wake up earlier than they would any other day of the year, go downstairs (out the door and into the car) blurry eyed, and then race to see what they, and their loved ones, will find under the tree.

Ever since they stopped writing letters to Santa, “Black Friday” has become more exciting than Christmas, and with good reason — on Black Friday you still don’t know what you’re actually going to get.

I’d love to say commercialism ruined Christmas, but the reality is Hollywood, Macy’s, and Madison Avenue created the gift-giving side of the holiday we celebrate. No, in reality, Amazon.com killed Christmas.

Each year, I’m told by my wife to build a list on the online retailer’s website or just send her links to the things I’d like. And each year, Christmas morning is about as exciting as watching the UPS truck pull up in front of the house — I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we skip the wrapping paper and sit around in our PJs opening brown shipping boxes.

We’ve made Christmas shopping so efficient, it’s become simply Christmas buying.

In our effort to avoid the hassle and mall trips, we’ve taken something from the holidays as well. Instead of letters of hope to Santa, we have our kids send invoices. And then the pressure is on the big guy to cross everything off that list.

The answer, of course, isn’t to replace what we really want with “surprise” gifts (wedding registries remind us of the peril in that).

The key seems to lie in bringing some of Santa’s wonder back into play and to remind ourselves of the dreamy anxiety that made the entire month between Thanksgiving and Christmas so special in our younger days.

I remember a game my siblings and I used to play with the old Sears catalog. We’d turn the page and each point to one item on the next two-page spread.

Just like “finder’s keepers,” the first one to point would “get” that present. We’d spend hours doing it, eventually able to finger the Hot Wheels slot-car set with our eyes closed. Of course, we never actually received most (if any) of what we’d chosen. But it didn’t matter, we’d gotten miles of use out of that book, even before we used it to prop up a little one at the dining room table.

I’m reminded of this game because something similar happens on Black Friday (though in an effort to prevent violence, many stores are taking the fun out of this too by issuing vouchers for items to the first in line instead). It’s that run into the store, not sure of where you’re going or which of the items you saw in the turkey-sized mound of circulars is the one you really want to find, that’s so much fun.

Some people actually wait in the line with no particular item in mind. And while many rush to the registers, the wonder of the early morning can really be found for free in the experience.

Money is going to be tight for most of us this year, and because of that, we’ll want our gift giving to be as efficient as possible. But there’s no reason we have to turn the whole experience into a grocery list.

This year, go to the mall for some window shopping. It’s a great chance to spend some time with those closest to you without having to actually wait in register lines and a good time to slip in a lesson about “wants” and “needs.”

Plus, it may just keep some of the wonder of the season alive, even if you already know what’s under the tree.

James Clements is a Culpeper resident and independent columnist who appears each Monday. E-mail