The Madness of Christmas Shopping

The sheer madness of Christmas shopping kicked in with full force this week.  Or so it felt.  I was just trying to do my normal weekly shopping on Monday, only to find myself confronted by empty shelves at the first supermarket I visited.  We're not talking seasonal items here, but regular everyday items I was trying to buy.  In the end, I had to visit no less than four different supermarkets to get what I wanted.  Two of them were branches of Lidl (we have three of them in Crapchester) - there seem to be marked differences in the shopping patterns of aficionados of these two branches, even amongst those in the grip of Christmas shopping madness.  But what drives people to engage in this annual insanity?  After all, the shops are only going to be closed for a couple of days, (in some cases, only one day, as quite a few open on Boxing Day), so panic buying seems a little over the top.  That said, Christmas Day itself, of course, feels like a deadline, demanding that we all have everything in place in order to create the 'perfect' day and avid disappointment.  Leaving some stuff until after the day itself feels like a failure.  Because that's the thing - we're sold the concept of a 'perfect Christmas' that has to include certain ingredients - if any of them are missing, then you are a complete and utter failure.  It's entirely driven by retailers' need to generate sales in order to prop up profits.

At this point, I should be telling you of how I'm superior to these blatant attempts to manipulate me during this season of goodwill.  Except that this week I've found myself caught up in the madness.  Yesterday, I found myself in a branch of Lidl in a different town at quarter to ten in the evening, looking for a particular item I had decided that I needed in order to complete my Christmas.  (I should add that I didn't go out of town specifically to try and obtain it - I was there visiting relatives and the Lidl was on my way home, so I decided to seize the opportunity).  Failing to get it there, (they'd sold out, as had a branch at home I'd tried on the way out of my own town earlier in the day.  So, today, I found myself driving around three supermarkets here, (one Lidle and two Aldis) in search of the item.  I eventually found it, ironically, in the Aldi where I thought that I had bought it several weeks ago.  (I should explain here that I hadn't realised that this year Aldi had two versions of the product on sale and that I had unwittingly picked up the one I didn't want.  I didn't realise my mistake until some time later.  Instead of trying to exchange it, I gave it to someone else who liked that variety, confident that I could get a replacement of the correct type.  But by the time I tried, the Christmas shopping madness was upon us).  I cannot deny that getting this item became something of an obsession with me - I became unreasonably determined that I was going to correct my error, no matter how many Lidls and Aldis I had to go to and no matter where they were.  It was utterly stupid and I'm sure that I wouldn't have been so obsessed had it not been Christmas and this hadn't been a seasonal item.  Like I said, it is the utter madness of the season that grips us all this time of year - none of us are immune.