Confessions of A Recovering Holiday Shopper: 2011 Update

This is an update to an arti­cle I posted last year dur­ing my third con­sec­u­tive year as a recov­er­ing hol­i­day shop­per. You can read the orig­i­nal arti­cle here.

Hav­ing cel­e­brated “Buy Noth­ing Day” on Black Fri­day last week instead of brav­ing poten­tial assaults of pep­per spray at Wal-Mart or even worse, I now am faced with the prospect that this year, I must once again enter the belly of the dreaded shop­ping beast.

My non-Christmas shop­ping days are over. Like a recov­er­ing alco­holic at a New Year’s Eve party, this year I’m chal­lenged to return to the scene of the crime and learn to exhibit self-restraint.

With the addi­tion of two new son-in-laws to the fam­ily, the fam­ily dynamic has shifted. No longer does the women’s “no gift” pol­icy rule. The men want tra­di­tion! Wrapped presents under a tree and noth­ing less.

Last year, the men suf­fered through our fam­ily tra­di­tion of no gifts, but not with­out frus­tra­tion. They wanted to give their new wife and bride-to-be some­thing spe­cial at Christ­mas. This was under­stand­able. So when they put their col­lec­tive feet down this year and declared there will be gifts at Christ­mas, the girls and I knew it was time to relax our boy­cott on gift giv­ing and thus, the issue of hol­i­day shop­ping returns to the forefront.

Hav­ing avoided the whole hol­i­day shop­ping scene for the past three years, the prospect of re-entry does not seem appeal­ing. News of a man’s death at a Tar­get in Vir­ginia on Black Fri­day and of crowds step­ping over his body to get to the bar­gains does not exactly evoke the hol­i­day spirit.

How­ever, just prior to Thanks­giv­ing, while work­ing in New York, I decided to give myself a test run at Macy’s, just to get warmed up. Or so I hoped.

Noth­ing like tak­ing on the Olympics of shop­ping! This is Macy’s flag­ship store, touted as “The largest depart­ment store in the world,” with over 1 mil­lion square feet of shop­ping, cov­er­ing four square blocks of prime real estate in mid-town Man­hat­tan, and sit­ting nine sto­ries high. I felt like I should cross myself and gen­u­flect at the revolv­ing doors before enter­ing. And I’m not even Catholic!

Tak­ing a deep breath, I cau­tiously entered through the men’s depart­ment on 7th Avenue and was imme­di­ately over­whelmed by mer­chan­dise, music and of course, the press of the crowd. This is the part I dis­like the most about hol­i­day shop­ping. I lit­er­ally become dis­ori­ented and dizzy in a large store, like the life is being sucked right out of me. Can any­one relate to this phenomenon?

Press­ing on, I was deter­mined not to suc­cumb to these first few moments of pure reflex con­di­tion­ing. As my reward, I was imme­di­ately faced with an even big­ger chal­lenge. The per­fume depart­ment! Per­fume, cologne or any kind of scented prod­uct is my kryp­tonite. I’ve spent years try­ing to avoid peo­ple who wear per­fume and even have a “thank you for not wear­ing fra­grance” pol­icy for my home. Walk­ing through a per­fume depart­ment, with sales­peo­ple hold­ing bot­tles of the lat­est celebrity fra­grance and ask­ing to spray some in my direc­tion, has always been anath­ema to me. My sinuses get acti­vated and the vio­lent sneez­ing begins, last­ing some­times for an entire day. I kid you not!

Hold­ing my breath, I dashed through the per­fumes, man­ag­ing to suc­cess­fully avoid the dis­gust­ing scented cards being waved in my direc­tion and entered the main sanc­tu­ary: Macy’s ground floor!

I was unpre­pared for what I saw next. Mind you, I’m not from the boonies with one local dry goods store attempt­ing to be a one size fits all depart­ment store. I’m from the San Fran­cisco Bay area, with Neiman’s, Sak’s, Gump’s and high-end designer shops just for starters. I know good mer­chan­dise when I see it. And I know bad mer­chan­dise as well. But I had never quite seen the likes of what greeted me on Macy’s main floor. Sorry, Macy’s. But I gotta tell it like it is. No soft ped­dling here.

It felt like I’d entered a ware­house filled to the rafters with cheap goods from China. As if a boat from China had docked out in front and lit­er­ally dumped its con­tain­ers at Macy’s front door. It was shock­ing, actu­ally! Every­where I looked, there were stacks and racks of “stuff.” My nor­mal nau­sea turned to dis­gust as I beheld what assaulted me from every angle. Cheap, plastic-feeling purses mas­querad­ing as leather, poorly made scarves and shawls, cheap plas­tic jew­elry and other acces­sories were in abun­dance. I real­ize I’m over-using the words “cheap” and “plas­tic,” but seri­ously, I can find no other words to describe my experience.

My head reel­ing, I decided to ven­ture to the 2nd floor, women’s apparel. Surely there would be some­thing avail­able for pur­chase that didn’t come from China! Wrong again. With­out even read­ing the labels, the goods greet­ing me in women’s apparel screamed “made in China.” It reminded me of being in Rus­sia dur­ing the breakup of the old Soviet Union when the only imported goods avail­able were cheaply-made items from Turkey.

The good news? I wasn’t even remotely tempted to buy any­thing. I’d had enough. I quickly made my way back to the down esca­la­tor and out the door on 7th Avenue. Clearly, if Macy’s is a dump­ing ground for Chi­nese goods, what must the dis­count stores like Tar­get and Wal-Mart be? We already know the answer to that ques­tion, don’t we? Which brings me to a moral dilemma.

Why are peo­ple lit­er­ally risk­ing life and limb to buy these goods on Black Fri­day or oth­er­wise, when it only enriches the cof­fers of the Chi­nese man­u­fac­tur­ers and the sav­ings aren’t actu­ally all that great? And besides, the qual­ity is poor! I don’t get it. There are no jobs being cre­ated in this coun­try, except for the retail­ers who ped­dle this stuff. The Amer­i­can con­sumer is being bamboozled.

Did you see the ads on TV for the Black Fri­day deals? No won­der peo­ple were whipped into such a frenzy — shop­pers came armed with pep­per spray to ensure they got the pur­chases they wanted. This is sick!

Which brings me back to my peren­nial issue of how to main­tain the Christ­mas spirit, honor the choice of my fam­ily this year to put wrapped gifts under the tree, while not get­ting pep­per sprayed or tram­pled in the process or falling into my old pat­terns of overbuying.

OK, I know what you’re going to sug­gest. Get cre­ative and make all the gifts! That’s likely not going to hap­pen. Not this year, prob­a­bly not ever. We are not a craft-oriented fam­ily nor am I a crafty-type per­son. But that doesn’t mean we can’t access the resources of oth­ers who are.

Enter the Inter­net! Thank good­ness for online shop­ping. Ama­zon is becom­ing my new best friend. I’m invit­ing the peo­ple on my gift list to put up a Wish List on Ama­zon. I’m sure there are many other resources for accom­plish­ing the same objec­tive. In fact, if you know of any, please, please let me know.

Happy Hol­i­day shop­ping ninja shoppers!

Tagged as: Black Friday, Christmas, Christmas music, Christmas Shopping, Cyber Monday, Department store, Macy's, Macy's department store, New York City, Online shopping, Retailing, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.