Eileen Loveman Daily Posting

Most everywhere in the U.S. the day after Thanksgiving has been designated as Black  Friday, a day where all stores open early (read 3 a.m.) to hold holiday sales and drastic reduction in prices of their products.  Aimed at the frugal shopper, it has become a tradition for many families, mostly women, who take the opportunuity to rise at two o’clock in the morning, double up on socks and under garments (here in the northeast) and climb into a cold car with the motor running, blasting cold air because it takes 10 minutes for the vehicle to warm up. 

From there they travel to their local Walmart, Target or other discount store to fight for a parking spot, to  fight for a shopping cart and to fight other people just like themselves so that they can get 50 cents off a flat screen tv or a cd player or even the dolly their little girl is clamoring for.

Jeez, do they even call them dollies anymore?

Anyway, it has become a rite of passage somehow, for mothers and daughter and sisters and cousins who enjoy the camarderie of finding the perfect gift, planning their game plan and escape route, all the while setting up for the kill in case one of their own happens to touch their stuff.

Its not my idea of a good time.

I thought about it one year, thinking I was missing out on something important, some kind of cultural phenomenon that I would be all the better for once I had experienced it – but when the alarm when off at 2:30 a.m., even the dogs raised their heads up off the floor to look at me and then at the LCD face of the clock to stare at me with their best What, are you nuts? look. 

So I rolled over and never looked back.

I thought back to when my children were little and for many years had to wait until the last paycheck before Christmas, forgoing paying the rent or the mortgage, and used it to purchase all the toys (and dollies) that I could afford.   In the words of fashion guru Tim Gunn,  I “made it work.”

For a long time, I couldn’t part with the funds to buy something early, discovering layaway as a godsend.   Maybe that’s where the innovative idea of shopping early and cheap arose from – the need for other mothers like me to buy in bulk and all in one place. 

There was no such thing in my house as hiding presents, for there wasn’t anything to hide until perhaps three or four days before hand.  I would wrap the presents on Christmas Eve as soon as they  (and their father) went to bed, when I had the whole house to myself and the Christmas music played softly in the background.  Even though it was the early 1980’s, I preferred to play cassette tapes of Frank Sinatra, Johnny Mathis, Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney while wrapping and taping.  A hot cup of tea steaming beside me on the kitchen table, I wrapped and taped until the wee  hours of the morning.  Like my mother before me, she was heading to the bedroom just as little slippered shod feet came clamoring down the hallway, exclaiming "Santa is here!" 

I’d think about my parents, living down south and far removed from the snow and cold of the season, a move they had looked forward to for a very long time,  and how much I missed them.  We were all raised basically the same way.  I thought about my siblings, all of us scattered across the country because of spouses and job comittments.  We would visit on the phone on Christmas afternoon, after all the gifts had been ripped open.  the shiny paper and shredded tape all over the living room floor, the wrapping I was now trying desperately to stretch to fit the last present.

It is a great memory to have, not one I would do away with if given the chance.  The gifts, either homemade or store bought, were always little treasures and pieces of my heart, and they knew that.

Nowadays the gifts are bigger and more expensive, and there is much more thought put into them, because I have both the luxury of time and funds to be able to put into the purchase.  Buying for grandchildren is much different that buying for kids, somehow.   There doesn’t seem to be the urgency to find the perfect gift or the present they have been begging for.  They are content to receive what Nana sends them or what Grandpa Steve hauls all from the truck.

I do get involved in the Cyber Monday experience – much more my style, because the only traffic is in cyberspace and I can roll over and go back to sleep when I am finished.

But I still wait until Christmas Eve to wrap all the presents, little treasures from my heart, as I listen to Frank, Bing, Johnny and Rosemary.

That is one tradition I can not do without.