Shop and Drop.

Thanksgiving has passed and, as noted in this space, it is now permissible to bring forth the holiday decorations, crank the carols, and indulge in the making of shopping lists for young and old. Our lists include shopping for children and grandchildren who relocated to France in August 2024. At this time last year, our thought was to send them a jug of Hancock’s Longview Forest Products’ maple syrup, certain to be among the things most missed about home. Rookie mistake. As I recall, the U.S. postal service was willing to get it there for around $600. So it stayed here, and we put together a medium box of less important, but festive items, which made it to them toward the end of January after a stint, lasting weeks, in French customs that cost them fifty Euros in import duties. This year, we are “Venmo-ing” cash.

I am a terrible shopper. I don’t like shopping, unless it is for groceries. I can spend hours shopping for groceries, especially if I am dropped into something like a cheese emporium, with cured meats, marinated olives, spices and fresh bread. Deposit me there, go off, fetch me before closing time. Currently, we are not abundantly supplied with those sorts of outlets in our region, but I can get along fine for a while at our local markets. Otherwise, to be dragged into dress shops, antique stores, toy stores, and the rest, sets a timer going, the ticktock of which my wife can hear. It’s extraordinary. At the moment the clock starts to sputter between tick and tock, she will say, “Time to go.” With this power, she can get me through three stores in one outing.

As a bachelor, however, I was regularly in the stores on Christmas Eve. On one occasion, in the stores after dinner on Christmas Eve. When you shop like this, as I do, you rarely win prizes for Best Overall Present at the holidays. People get things from me that they already have two of, that don’t fit, need batteries, or are missing the remote. More than once, it has been explained the present for a grandchild was not age appropriate. “She’s two. This is for eight and above! It’s on the box.”

Oh. Well, I thought, since the kids in the picture were having fun . . .

Shopping online is merely the distinction between drudgery and tedium. And it does nothing for the local economy. A forced march through a store is drudgery. Following the rabbit down one hole after another, online, is tedium. In-store, there is the chance for conversation, meeting a friend or neighbor, inclusive of the shopkeepers, most of whom are known to us in a small town. Online, the closest thing to conversation is chat, which is not conversation. It is dialogue, generally regarding size and availability. Afterward, there’s a follow-up questionnaire asking how the dialogue went. I hesitate to think how things will go if we evolve that way, offline. “Thanks for coming to Jim’s birthday party last night. For training purposes, please tell us, on a scale of one to five, how was your experience?”

This year, like most years, I have promised to shop early, to get out there with time to make well considered, meaningful choices capable of making a happy difference in the lives of the receivers. Role models would include the young children who showed up at the All Saints church Holiday Kid Shop during Peterborough’s annual Holiday Stroll in possession of their list of relations, with neat boxes they’d drawn beside each name for check marks. Done, and done. Those are people I can learn from.

For myself, at my age, I have adopted the rule I first heard espoused by my late uncle: anything for me must be consumable. I do not need new clothes—no more sweaters, shirts, ties, winter jackets, boots, (okay, maybe sometimes socks), etc. No gadgets, pots or pans, or lawn equipment. Nothing, thank you, except what is edible, drinkable or readable (per Uncle’s rule, books are consumable). We are in outgo mode. I am, at least. Not my wife. I wish to heap gifts on her, as much as I can—provided they can be exchanged.