By Ruth Pennebaker

Show me an old-fashioned holiday shopper and I’ll show you an exhausted, disheveled, nervous wreck. I should know; I used to be one of them.

For years, I battled the holiday crowds, elbowing my way to the front of the line. If I dragged my husband along, I got to watch him become semi-catatonic, a condition I annually diagnosed as “mall-aise.” (“I hate these places,” he always muttered. “I can’t breathe. What does a panic attack feel like?”) I listened to cashiers complain about their kids, their bank accounts, their long store hours, their fallen arches, their shiftless partners.

Worst of all, I listened to Muzak renditions of The Little Drummer Boy so many times I thought I might possibly be losing my mind. (Who wrote that song, anyway? Is there any punishment great enough to atone for that evil deed?)

If your idea of the holiday spirit is defined as “toxic,” then I had the holiday spirit. It was as much fun as breaking out in a rash.

But, wait! The clouds part, The Little Drummer Boy goes silent, and I feel cheerful, calm and content. I discovered online holiday shopping – and I’ll never go back to the mall.

It started suddenly, three or four years ago. There I was, as usual, panicked by my skimpy holiday haul at a late date (Dec. 21, I seem to remember – a date when most retailers stop talking about shopping days left ’til Christmas, since only complete losers haven’t finished their gift-buying). I knew the hellish scene that lay ahead of me: Outraged, sullen kids on Christmas morning, brooding about their miserly, haphazard parents who couldn’t get it together for a holiday gift extravaganza. I had to take action.

That’s when I stumbled across online salvation in the form of a Neiman-Marcus sale. I found a wine-colored cashmere sweater for our daughter. A black leather coat for our son. All beautiful, all 40 percent off. The more I looked, the more I found; Christmas morning was looking better and better. Maybe I wasn’t such a terrible mother, after all. (To celebrate this fact, I added a pair of Ferragamo shoes to my list. Good mothers, with hard-to-fit narrow feet, need their own rewards.)

So it was a little expensive – getting all this loot delivered by Christmas Eve. Big deal. It was worth it. When the brown UPS truck screeched to a halt in front of our house and the delivery guy arrived at our door, staggering under the weight of my purchases, I felt justified. Christmas at our house had been saved. So had family harmony.

Since then, I’ve refined my holiday-shopping behavior a little – but not much. Once a sloppy, disorganized, lazy shopper, always a sloppy, disorganized, lazy shopper – whether on the Internet or in the mall.

I usually return to my old haunts like Neiman-Marcus (the store that gave me my first credit card as a fledgling adult, earning my enduring loyalty), Barneys, Saks, Bergdorf’s, Bloomingdale’s. I drink my extra-strength coffee and cuddle up in my soft pink bathrobe, secure in the notion that I don’t have to look good – or even presentable – to shop.

Tell me what you want for Christmas, I e-mail my kids. (They may not be great at staying in touch, but they always manage to answer promptly when I write that.) Then I Google their requests, comparing prices and delivery dates. I never did any comparison-shopping while I was marching around on my own two, exhausted feet through crowded malls. Think, just think, of the money I’m saving! I congratulate myself every time I end up on Shopzilla, the comparison shopping site I found accidentally, hunting down the best bargains.

If I get tired (fingers having feelings, too), I take a nap. Nobody knows. If I’m feeling needy, I buy something for myself. Nobody knows that, either. (“Who is this for?” the saleswomen used to ask me, as I shamefacedly slipped in a purchase or two or three for myself at the mall. I could always tell their idea of the holiday spirit didn’t include rampant self-indulgence.) Best of all, I can return items by dropping them off at a postal store – and saving myself the dehumanizing schlep to the mall to explain myself to the skeptical salespeople.

I’m never will be an early, disciplined shopper. But I’ve made new friends – like the UPS delivery guy. My family thinks I’m swell. My blood pressure is lower, people no longer inquire worriedly about my health, and my annual holiday Bride of Dracula look is banished.

Lugging packages? Waiting in line? Hunting endlessly for a decent parking place? Traipsing along with the sad, hysterical, dispirited mob of holiday shoppers? It’s all like a bad dream – and I finally woke up.

Happy holidays! I won’t be seeing you at the mall this year.

Photo of Ruth Pennebaker by Michael Trevino

Copyright © 2007 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

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