The advantage of buying virtually all the Christmas presents you are going to give the family either via the Internet or by telephone is that you don't have to brave the shops and all those crowds of frantic shoppers, desperately trying to find things to buy. You can order at home with the knowledge that the goods will be delivered to your home, leaving you relaxed and free of stress. There are few downsides to buying online or by phone. The only ones I can think of is the amount of cardboard boxes and packaging that you end up with. Oh, and the fact that because the Husband and I are awaiting deliveries of things we have ordered one of us always has to be at home during the day and we can't go out together. But it's only for a few days, so this is soon over.
I may not be out buying Christmas presents but I'm still not avoiding the shops totally. There are still "ordinary" things to buy for day-to-day life. And in each shop there is the piped music, which at this time of the year is all Christmas based. Like "Deck the Hall with Boughs of Holly, tralalalalalalala .....
And then there is Christmas music being played at home. The Husband loves to listen to Christmas choral music and oratorios during December, loudly.
[Posted a bit later - at the moment he is playing, one after the other, all the FIVE different versions he has of Vaughn Williams "Fantasia of Christmas Carols" so he can work out which one he prefers. (FYI, so far he prefers the one from the Guildford Cathedral choir. The one I liked was dismissed because it had sopranos singing rather than boys - grin)]
Have you noticed that Television adverts change at this time of year? Suddenly they are full of adverts: for perfume (including that incredibly expensive one from Dior with Nicole Kidman that they originally showed last year); for food for THE meal; games (I believe that this is the best time of year to sell games); and lots of happily smiling perfect-looking families opening parcels to display things that advertisers think we should buy as gifts.
Oh well, only 19 days to go. All that anticipation.......
4 comments:
How inconvenient that you must be at home to accept package deliveries. Fortunately for us, our delivery companies just leave the package(s) on our front porch if they find no one at home. In fact, they normally take the precaution of draping the "welcome mat" over the package to protect it from the elements, then, "ring the bell and run"--not waiting to see if we answer. This is so convenient. Of course, at times, it takes us a day or two to find the packages because we, ourselves, do not usually use the front door to the house. (We enter the house through the door from the garage.)
Cop Car
Over here the Post Office used just to drop the parcels in the porch outside the front door and when we came home from work the parcel would be waiting for us. Fine, we had no problem with that at all. However, about a year ago some people began to make a fuss about this (afraid that the parcels might be stolen, I suppose) and so the Post Office stopped the procedure. Now if you are not in to take the parcel you have all the palarver of making your way to the out-of-the-way sorting office and when you get there realising that you don't have with you a form of identification they will accept... It takes forever to sort out.
Then again several of the parcels require a signature on acceptance so we have to be in for those.
Still, virtually all the parcels have arrived by now. (We are great beleivers in now waing until the last minute when ordering over the Net.)
Good for you in not procrastinating! I shall never qualify for qualification to your club. *sigh* Bummer that people's fears keep you from convenience.
We have "cluster mailboxes" where we now live--all of the mailboxes for a cluster of 10-20 houses are installed as a unit. In addition to the individual mailboxes, there are a couple of "over-sized" boxes in which a not-too-large parcel may be left--with the key to that box's being left in our individual mailbox. If the package won't fit, the mail carrier will (unless signature is required) leave it on the porch. We've never had a problem retrieving packages that required signature or mail that has been accummulated while we were out-of-town; but, this is a small community of about 20,000 people.
Most of our front-porch deliveries come from UPS (United Parcel Service) or FEDEX (FEDeral EXpress), however. As private companies, they have no access to our mailboxes. There are other delivery services (DHL, for one) that we've not used, so far. You surely have UPS and FEDEX, there, but you may not use them.
Cop Car
Yes, we have UPS and FEDEX and several other courier companies over here and doing a lot, especially since the Royal mail lost its monopoly for delivering parcels to and from individuals.
Cluster mailboxes, or come to think of it single mailboxes, just aren't used for single dwellings over here, although I think you can find them in some blocks of flats. Mail is delivered to individual dwellings and unless too big to fit is posted through a letterbox in the front door sraight onto the doormat. So we get ordinary letters OK, it is when the parcel is too big to fit through the letterbox that we have to wait in for them.
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