Christmas shopping has changed. A lot.
Shopping for the holidays used to be different--and not really too many years ago, either. The experience itself used to be what you might call analog. I think we've forgotten how much different it really was then.
Before the arrival of the internet, the one best thing a person could do to enhance their shopping experience was to go down to their local 7-11 store and buy a newspaper. (The shopping ads for the day after Thanksgiving were bigger than the paper itself!) Sure, there were ads on the radio, and specials on the TV, but really--paper ads were the best. If the newspapers themselves weren't analog enough, they contained coupons that we actually had to clip and carry!
Walking through stores was 90% percent of the Christmas shopping experience back then. Even without any idea of what to shop for, we could almost always find something. Sometimes, like if I were stressed because I was running out of shopping days, a stop at a bar was required to aid in the gift-selection process. It allowed me to relax and let my "perfect present" guard down.
Not long ago, if you wanted to mail-order something you had to factor the calendar in. You had to send your order (with payment usually) at least two weeks before you wanted it to arrive. That's a week for your payment to get there, and a week for them to ship it to you, and that's not even including any holiday crunch delivery slowdowns. To really ensure what you ordered arrived in time you needed 3 weeks or better.
Has shopping gotten too easy? Yes.
Now all we need to do is decide what we want, check the internet to see who is willing to undercut the next guy's prices, and order it right on the spot. The payment is instant, and the shipping is not far behind. We have so many options now that we're really only limited by how much we're willing to shell out for shipping.
Shopping used to be a nightmare for me because I consider too many things. If there was any doubt about an item I was thinking about buying I would keep looking. I shopped like I was buying for myself, and that was always my downfall. No matter how much shopping I was doing, I was always struggling to find just the right item. I felt I was wasting so much time and accomplishing nothing. Had I been a person with the, "eh, it's good enough for him" mentality it never would have been an issue, but I'm not wired that way. I'm also not good with crowds. Especially parking lot crowds.
Now, it's no longer an issue--We can sit and shop from the comfort of our own home.
Thanks to the digital age and how easy it is to shop, we have a new set of problems. There are theft issues of course, like identity theft, and porch theft, but my biggest peeve of shopping in the digital age is the lack of individual privacy. It used to be that we only had to worry about someone seeing the box that arrived and knowing what was in it, but now it carries even further. Even browsing for products online is dangerous because there is every possibility of my search history becoming public knowledge to my wife and vice-versa. If you each shop on Amazon you have to make it a point to not look at email confirmations that show up and threaten to ruin your surprise.
In some ways I prefer the old way because everything was slower and more predictable. On the other hand, I love the short amount of time it takes to get products delivered to our door.
The ease of shopping also means I spend too much money. It's just too easy...
