Christmas Shopping Done

Had a busy day...good day...started it off with breakfast out with a friend...good time that...I'm not used to eating breakfast anymore, but eggs and bacon and pancakes works out quite well for that meal of the day. Then after that, I went to do my Christmas shopping. Went pretty well - last year I set a record and did all my Christmas shopping in four hours one night...this year was about 6 hours in the afternoon. And all done. One good thing about waiting this long to do it is that it seems like stores are trying to clear product. Found some good sales and discounts. But just wait for next week for that. The stores weren't too bad until about 4 or so in the afternoon, then it started to get nuts. Luckily, I got out of it before it peaked, but I can only imagine stores will keep getting worse until Christmas is over. There were a couple stores I walked into in the mall and turned around and left when I saw the mass of humanity all jostling for the right to spend money. And that's the shame of it. My friend and I have talked about how Christmas is just getting worse every year. People are getting more and more nuts - spending time and money and adding stress to run around and do shopping, parties, and dinners that they don't really want to do and spending time with people they don't even like! We'd be way better off if the stores closed on time without extended hours, Christmas Eve was a STAT holiday, and people just wound down and spent time with people they actually like and forget about the commercialism of it all. Why do all this stuff if you don't like it? People need to get out of this corporate driven rut and get back to sitting around a tree threading popcorn together and relaxing. But I don't see that happening with the level of humanity these days.