That ringing noise you hear isn’t sleigh bells, it’s cash registers across the land gearing up for the busiest couple of weeks of the year.
Yes, it’s December, and December means Christmas shopping. And there is no shortage of options to separate you from your hard earned cash at this time of year. Santa’s helpers throughout corporate North America have been working tirelessly since December 26 last year to develop a range of consumer goods that everybody who is anybody simply must have for Christmas 2025. You can ignore them and their wall-to-wall advertising all you like, but ultimately it will make no difference. They will simply do an end run around your wall of indifference and get at you through your kids. Or your wife. Or both.
As always, there will be those among us who pine for the days when Christmas was not about a new video game, the latest Barbie collectible or whatever fresh atrocity the Disney Corporation is about to unleash upon the world. Those are the people for whom Christmas is about rosy faced children singing carols by an open fire as large, soft and fluffy flakes of snow fall from the darkened sky. It’s a Victorian Christmas, just like you see on television.
There’s no question that that idea of Christmas is an attractive one. But it’s somewhat undermined by the fact that most Victorian children had very little to sing about and the only thing that made their cheeks so rosy were the early symptoms of cholera, diphtheria or rickets.
So much for nostalgia. There will also be those who believe Christmas should still be regarded first and foremost as a religious festival. They may well be right, but try telling that to a rapacious 10-year-old who simply has to have the latest K-Pop Demon Hunters collectable, because all of their friends already have some and if you don’t get it for them it will be The Worst Thing That Ever Happened in the Entire History of the World and you will have failed as a parent.
So let’s face it. You’re kind of screwed. And not in that fun way I read about on the Internet.
The good news is that the big day itself is still three weeks away, so there’s no need to panic just yet. And the big online retailers will be shipping right up until Christmas Eve.
It would be foolish, however, to wait too much longer before you venture out to get your shopping done. You may think there’s still plenty of time, but time has a way of slipping by. If you find yourself touring the streets of Drayton Valley desperately looking for a gas station that’s still open at 11 p.m. on December 24 in the hope that the mysterious object your wife has been dropping hints about for the last six months is either a litre of oil, an air freshener shaped like a pine tree or one of those snow brushes with a retractable handle, don’t blame me.
Besides, a lot of retailers, particularly smaller operations, rely on the money they take in during this month to see them through the other 334 days of the year. Times are tough out there, and we have an economy to support. So it’s almost your patriotic duty to get out and spend, spend, spend.
