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International Shopping Day for Men

Posted on December 24, 2008, 12:12am

It’s the last shopping day before Christmas and stores are welcoming the wallets of men in particular. A myriad of studies show men and women shop differently.

Hence, Christmas Eve could easily become International Shopping Day for Men.

We women like to look at everything, compare, analyse, prod, poke, feel and discuss items before we buy.

In the months leading up to Christmas, we spend days going from store to store, comparing price, quality, colour, texture, usefulness and lay-by arrangements.

We start at one end of Naracoorte’s Smith Street in August and finish at Commercial Street East in Mount Gambier by December.

Along the way we would have checked out shops in Millicent, Kingston, Penola or Robe.

We think about each item for weeks, discussing possible purchases with friends at work, school bus stops, golf, tennis and Christmas parties.

And every shopping journey is a social event, requiring a female companion.

Together we consider whether or not Auntie Peg would like a book, towels or perhaps a new handbag.

Then we get sidetracked about Auntie Peg’s pet magpie along with her most recent trip to the doctor.

We discuss how hard it is buying a present for our father-in-law “who has everything” unless it’s out of our price range.

During a break between shops, we even go to the toilet together, discussing the monetary value of everything.

After zig zagging hundreds of kilometres on swollen red feet, we return to an original shop, in the original town, which was advertising towels and purchase “a bargain”.

But men are different.

For example, getting husband David in a car to go Christmas shopping is like trying to milk a bull.

Unless it’s for the farm or his stomach, shopping isn’t his thing.

He’ll wander a grocery shop popping all kinds of vitamin enhancing things in the trolley, like blocks of chocolate, lollies, chips and coke.

He’s even happier in a hardware store looking at “must have” things like pipe, wire strainers and pumps.

But Christmas shopping?

On Christmas Eve, it’s done with military precision.

Wherever a car park can be found, it is stop, lock, shop, unlock and load.

The town selected for shopping is determined only by whether or not he can get both a tyre fixed and a part for a windmill.

“Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Jesus, not shopping,” he says through gritted teeth on Christmas Eve each year.

He prefers to shop alone.

Never in a million years would he take a mate shopping, stop at a jumper, feel the quality and ask Michael, Nic or Mark: “Do you think this colour will suit her?”

Unless it’s a chainsaw, cattle trough or box of junk at a clearing sale, purchasing “a bargain” doesn’t happen either.

Items purchased are determined by no other thought process than a military order: “She should like that.”

Such justification has made way for some ever so romantic presents over the years, like a new tool box “for around the house”.

But while we women have black belts in shopping, many of us could also do without the commercialisation and materialistic side of Christmas.

For the greatest present of all is being able to spend time with people we love, old and young.

And to honour loved ones who have died.

Thank you for reading this column and for your wonderful views and ideas throughout the year.

If you see David shopping today, please tell him I don’t want or need an angle grinder.

Merry Christmas!

*Chris Oldfield can be contacted on 8768 9022 or email theborderwatch@bigpond.com.au.

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