The nightmares started sometime around Thanksgiving. Without exception, they jolted me awake in a cold sweat, a call to conscience, a subconscious warning against procrastination.
They went something like this:
It’s Christmas morning. I’ve just woken up in a guest room of my grandparents’ house in chilly northwestern Pennsylvania. How I know it’s Christmas morning isn’t clear. It just is.
I pull on my socks and prepare to head downstairs. Sounds like everyone else is down there already, probably waiting for me to wake up.
Then it hits me: Wait. How is it Christmas already? How did I get here? Where did December go? I’ve done no shopping. I have no gifts for anyone. I’ve brought no food. I have nothing.
I’m not 10 anymore. I can’t get away with this.
My options are bleak. I can try to climb out of my second-story bedroom window, run bootless to the car and hope against hope that some store — somewhere — is open. I can try to go back to sleep, pretend I don’t know it’s Christmas and hope to wake up on another, more convenient holiday.
I’m growing more and more desperate as the dream ends. I wake up — for real — in reality. It’s early morning. It’s not Christmas.
Sweet relief. No need to worry. Back to sleep.
Clearly, even nightmares can’t completely upend years of gift-shopping procrastination.
Even though bad dreams tried to get the better of me, I still waited until Dec. 23 before starting my holiday shopping in any kind of serious way this year. It’s not that I hate giving; it’s that I’m not much for the overly commercial, overly materialistic practice it’s become.
Modern life being what it is, though, I go along with the habit — hesitantly. Time, regrettably, often seems in too short supply to do much of anything else.
So I use some monetary proceeds of what I can do — that is, reporting and writing — to buy the commercial, material gifts, delivered as warmly intended gestures of the season.
Those last couple hectic days of the holiday shopping season, before Christmas, run like clockwork. I join the panic-stricken people darting from store to store. They look stressed, wide-eyed, tense. Men seem to outnumber the women.
Research backs up the gender observation.
A 2007 study by the American Psychological Association found that men account for 54 of 100 chronic procrastinators. (A separate survey, conducted in 2007 by the National Retail Federation, found that 19.4 percent of men hadn’t started shopping as of Dec. 11 that year. Only 13.7 percent of women were in the same boat.)
The APA report notes that people procrastinate for varied reasons. They put tasks off because they’re tempted by other attractions; because they don’t sense immediacy; because they don’t believe they can get the work done easily; and because they don’t find much value in getting the work done.
In perhaps-related news, Friday last week — Christmas Eve — was expected to be the second-biggest shopping day of the holiday season, behind only Black Friday in November.
I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I’d wager that much of the shopping procrastination happens because people don’t cherish the experience. They don’t enjoy a lot of what it’s become. They like the holidays, but the whole shopping thing — it’s become too much obligation, too harried, too indulgent, not enough soul. If people loved it, wouldn’t more of them be out there shopping earlier?
Granted, the season marks an important moment to support our local businesses, community-minded merchants and their respective livelihoods. It’s a wonderful and worthy boon to them and, in turn, to the community. And that, in itself, is nothing to sneeze at. Not even a bah-humbug Monday columnist can rip on that.
Next year, maybe, I’ll try to visit those merchants sooner, put a little more thought into my presents and deliver them with something even more valuable:
Time.
