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Shoppers now on the clock

Since when is Dec. 14th considered last minute? I picked up the Vancouver Sun last Wednesday and there on the front page was a teaser for a section inside that was supposed to take the pain out of last-minute Christmas shopping.

Since when is Dec. 14th considered last minute?

I picked up the Vancouver Sun last Wednesday and there on the front page was a teaser for a section inside that was supposed to take the pain out of last-minute Christmas shopping.

I don't mean to single out the Sun because there are many media outlets and advertisers that continue to perpetuate this myth, but if you're out on the 14th of December, you're a good 10 days removed from being a bona fide lastminute shopper.

Now, I suppose there are different degrees of last-minute shopping, and for someone who has almost all their gifts bought and wrapped by Remembrance Day, then the middle of December could be considered late, but to those of us who ply our trade with the clock actually ticking down, mid-December might as well be July.

The real last-minute shoppers are those guys (and I think the masculine term is appropriate in this instance) who pound the pavement on Christmas Eve, beads of sweat forming as they valiantly try to remember colour, size and those other Ishould-have-listened-more-closely details that have a way of torpedoing the best of intentions.

These guys are often subject to ridicule and sarcasm, but I figure if you set aside time to go buy your gifts, does it really matter whether that's three months or three hours before they're to go under the tree? Granted, if things don't go exactly as planned for those in the latter camp there's not a lot of time for Plan B, but I assumed that's why gift cards were invented.

I had to laugh the other day when I heard a radio spot for 7/11 advertising the fact it had gift cards for over 50 different stores, restaurants and services. It used to be that if you were so last-minute you were doing the convenience store thing, the best you could hope for was a paperback and a nice selection of prepackaged baked goods, ones so full of preservatives that, ironically, you could have bought them six months earlier and they still would have been fresh to slip under the tree tomorrow.

Now these guys have a kiosk full of gift cards to choose from, although if you're going to go down that road, I recommend not handing over the little activation slip along with the card unless you can convince the cashier to back-date it.

This year the gods are smiling on lastminute shoppers as Christmas Eve falls on a Saturday, allowing most an entire day to wrestle the retail giant. I guess that's good, although I'm still not sure what I'll do in the morning.