However, while Black Friday is a major shopping day, it is not, in fact, the biggest shopping day of the year. The actual peak sales days occur on average from Dec. 20th to the 23rd. People shopping on these days immediately before Christmas aren't just picking up odds and ends. They tend to be doing all of their shopping. Whether you dislike crowds or are just extremely busy and don't have the time to spend in a mall, there are ways to make shopping for Christmas gifts fast and painless.
Avoid the Rush: Shop With Catalogs or Online
While Black Friday and the week before Christmas mark some of the busiest shopping days, the time between is not significantly better. Malls and department stores are generally packed during the entire Christmas season. Although the experience of going to a store to buy a gift gives you the opportunity to handle the product, catalog shopping and shopping online are a faster, crowd-free ways of shopping for Christmas gifts.
Catalogs have been around for over a hundred years and still serve as an excellent means of expediting the shopping process. Most major department stores offer a print catalog that can either be picked up at a store location or requested online or over the phone. Although a major downside of shopping for Christmas gifts through catalogs is the shipping time delay, companies with catalogs generally offer rush shipping during the Christmas season. However, today, catalogs are losing steam and tend to serve more as a supplement to online gift shopping.
Shopping for Christmas gifts online comes with all of the benefits of catalog shopping without having to go out to get a catalog from each store you wish to browse. With the click of your mouse, you can hop from store to store while comparing prices of various retailers, a virtual bargain shopping. Moreover, websites that offer online gift shopping can display a wide variety of items that catalogs cannot always include.
Websites that are not for a specific department store are also extremely popular. Online gift shopping on sites like Amazon.com, Buy.com, and Ebay.com offer highly detailed descriptions, brand comparisons and customer reviews of products. While a shopper frequently encounters product descriptions and brand comparisons, the customer reviews add a helpful dimension not available with catalogs or in stores.
For instance, a person shopping for Christmas gifts on Amazon may want an mp3 player. However, a customer review of the immensely popular iPod Nano criticizes the fragility, noting that one drop to the floor destroyed the screen. That is highly useful information for a gizmo that costs $250. If one is shopping for a younger user apt to drop things, the iPod mini is recommended instead of the iPod nano. No catalog will offer this kind of information and few sales persons will surrender negative information easily.
Shopping for Christmas Gifts Made Easier
If none of these options appeal to you, or if you simply cannot decide what somebody wants (or already has), stores, catalogs, and websites have an easy out for you. While a bundle of cash is not usually considered a suitable gift, a gift certificate for a favorite store is as good as gold and can save you the time and agony of trying to decide what to give.
When Crowds, Not Time, Is the Issue
Alternatively, if crowds are your main concern but you still want to show that you have put some time in a gift, start making your Christmas gifts by hand. You can put that time that you are saving by avoiding the mall into a homemade Christmas gift! Don't let the curse of Black Friday haunt you any more. Between catalogs and online gift shopping, you can put the fun back into shopping for Christmas gifts.
Shopping for Christmas Gifts: Is Every Day Black Friday?
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