The joys of buying under pressure…

he Leamington lights are on, decorations are up, and term is drawing to a close. It’s inevitable; Christmas is coming.

As the student body gets preoccupied with returning home for Christmas to laze around receiving presents and watching bad TV, doomsday hovers at the back of my mind: the annual Christmas present shop.

Let’s face it: most of us are more concerned with finding enough money to pay for food, travel and alcohol for the remaining weeks of term than with buying things for other people.

In fact, we still have a month to go, so only the dedicated minority have even begun planning what to buy for loved ones, let alone actually parting with any cash. Sensible, you’re probably thinking; level-headed, not getting carried away by the annual hype and getting all Christmas-obsessed too early. I’m tempted to agree, if it weren’t for the niggling memory of previous years’ presents.

My long-suffering dad has received more ‘World’s Best Dad’ mugs than would be needed in a restaurant that served only fathers of a certain calibre.

My brothers endure a yearly ‘footballing blunders’ DVD which they genially watch on Boxing Day and then shelve until the next time mum rounds things up for the charity shop, and Mum herself has so many bracelets that her jewellery box is a mess of tangled chains. The problem is, I simply cannot buy good presents under pressure.

Leaving it last minute, kidding yourself that you’ll enjoy the ‘atmospheric buzz’ of shopping on Christmas Eve, is never a good idea.

The stampede of panicked shoppers snatching up bargains from the Marks and Spencer ‘3 for 2’ offer shakes the high street, the queue for the car park snakes back twenty minutes, and even Superdrug have run out of shower gel gift-boxes.

Chaos claims the streets the week before Christmas. Mob mentality rules, as we elbow people out of the way to find something – anything – to give Gran, and any kind of Christmas cheer goes thoroughly out of the window, drifting away over the heads of distressed shoppers.

If I sat down and worked out what to buy everyone in advance, maybe I’d save myself a great deal of hassle. Maybe planning ahead and budgeting (that infamous student mantra) really is the way forward if we want to avoid having to choose between alcohol consumption and buying original, non-Poundland sourced presents.

Imagine spending the week before Christmas in a haze of lovely Christmassy cheer, rather than stressing over where you can buy five good presents for less than twenty quid.

Much as we all mock the frenzy of shops to get us to buy everything in October (or in the case of my Grandmother, to start buying ‘just the odd thing’ in August), I’m beginning to think it might be a better option.

Unfortunately, we’re already beginning December and this epiphany has arrived a little late. Looks like another year of socks for Gramps. After all, it’s the thought that counts…