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Christmas shopping was never fun

Santa seen on Timico premisesOur daughter, who is away at university, has very thoughtfully taken the pain away from our Christmas shopping by sending us (or her mum at least) a number of links to items she wants for Christmas. Easy peasy – we just have to forward the emails to Santa with endorsements – yes pair of jeans/no new car for him to take care of the logistics.

When you think about it why on earth would anyone in their right mind want to traipse around the shops buying Christmas presents. It has always been a nightmare. Online shopping was born for this very purpose.

A number of years ago my wife requested a very simple Christmas present. She wanted the “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” board game. Anne comes from a long tradition of playing games on Christmas afternoon which despite the clash with the established Davies practice of falling asleep on the settee in front of the fire she wished to continue.

No probs think I. On Christmas eve afternoon I traipsed down town to buy the game. No way Jose. I tried 8 shops. All any of them had available was the junior version. Beads of perspiration began to form on my brow. As a last resort I went to Tesco. Same there. I ended up buying the junior version which of course had easy ish questions together with a book of harder adult questions, but not the actual game she wanted.

I piled some more presents on for good measure but knew it would not be good enough. Anne is not a material girl. All she wanted was simply “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”, the board game.

Came Christmas morning and amid the frenzy of wrapping paper flying across the living room Anne eventually looked around for her present. Unwrapping her present the disappointment was palpable.  My feeling of guilt, total. I had let my girl down. The girl who sacrifices everything for the sake of her family.

There was nothing I could do but drown my guilt in copious quantities of champagne whilst Anne selflessly returned to the isolation of the kitchen and her own thoughts.

From that year onwards I have never left the Christmas shopping to the last minute. Hooray for the world wide web. Hooray for online shopping. And whilst I think of it hooray for Christmas parties. Come to mine 🙂

PS sometime before Christmas remind me to tell you the story of when I left Hannah’s main present in the store room of the office and had to retrieve it on boxing day!

Trefor Davies

By Trefor Davies

Liver of life, father of four, CTO of trefor.net, writer, poet, philosopherontap.com

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