Holiday shopping…it consumes us at this time of the year.  Gifts for the kids, your friends, your parents, your pets, teachers, bus drivers - need I say more?  I was thinking the other day that it would just be so simple if we could do it all online.  No parking hassles, no crowds to navigate - basically no need to go anywhere at all.  And all you really need is a little time (for the days it takes to ship the gifts).  It seems so easy.  But there’s one small glitch, and this is why I haven’t converted to 100% online holiday shopping.  And the glitch is that when you buy online, you can’t see, touch, smell, try on and/or taste what you are buying.  And it turns out that this is so important to me that I still tend to do most of my holiday shopping in person.

That being said, maybe that small glitch becomes less important if I can get much better deals online?  Just yesterday I was planning on going to get two books at a local bookstore, but then I heard that there were deals to be had on Amazon.com, and guess what?  I bought the books through Amazon.com.  But books are books.  Let’s ponder this scenario when buying a more personal item, like buying a shirt for my sister?!  Hmmm….  Honestly, if the online deal was great, I would buy it this way and have it shipped to me – for my own quality control.  Then once I received the shirt, if I wasn’t happy with the look and the feel of the fabric – which is almost impossible to tell when you are buying online - I would immediately run out to a local clothing store and buy a replacement shirt.  In other words, no more online shirt, and now I have to deal with its return – uggh. 

So for me, in person holiday shopping – or shopping at any time of the year for that matter – will never go away….  But what are your thoughts?  And how would you characterize your holiday shopping – a mix of both online and in person or predominately one or the other?  I can’t wait to hear….