The Saint Paul globe., 1904-12-15
CHRISTMAS IS NEAR
SHOPPING is BEING DONE IN
A WILD FRENZY
Women Forget Their Manners and
Their Faces Become Tense and
Drawn During the Days Just Before
the Great One of the Year

Christmas shopping is absorbing
women to a painful degree, and there
is no time for social amenities or even
ordinary politeness. the rush and
crowd of the shops women seem to slip
back into primitive savagery and to
become fierce. They have tense, drawn
and worried look on their faces, and
everything is forgotten but the hope
Of finding fifty dollar gifts marked
down to one ninety mine. If woman
sees her best friend coming, she turns
her head away and hurries along; she
has not time even for greeting: and as
for the long gossip formerly indulged
in by feminine shoppers, that is out of
the question during these strenuous
days
Take the advice of a friend and do
your Christmas buying alone. Two
persons never agreed upon a single
thing upon one of these expeditions,
and the most beautiful friendship
might be destroyed by shopping to-
gether. 1t is best to go alone and
wear q veil. A tragic and calculating
expression settles upon a Woman'S
face, after an hour or two and by the
time she gets home her list is in rib
bons, her hat is over one eye, and, ten
to one, she will discover she has left
out John, Kate and Amelia. Then it
must be done all over again.
There are some women who take
time by the forelock in their gift buy
ing and make all their friends wretch
ed by announcing that they bought all
theirs last April, or some other impos-
sible time. This woman sits back
comfortably and watches her nervous
friends become thinner and more nerv-
Gus as the days go by, until they get
into an actual state of frenzy as the
great day approaches and they have
not finished Then there is the woman
who wastes no sentiment on her man
ner of giving, but makes out~her list
in the most businesslike manner, goes
early and purchases something for
each friend that she has decided upon
before leaving the house at the exact
price she intended to pay and not n
cent more, and two weeks before
Christmas she will go round and leave
the gifts tied neatly in white paper,
and when she delivers the last one will
say to the last friend: There, thank
heaven, that is over; you are the last"
The friend feels exceedingly guilty
and wishes she had not been on her
list.
And. yet, after all, we love Christ
mas. Love the excitement, the mys-
teries, the real meaning of the day and
get the sordid bargaining, the trials of
shopping, the agony of mind which
took possession of US when we dis
cover that the Morris chair we paid
$50 for yesterday was marked down
today to $12. We love to think that
some family had a happier day be-
cause of us, and above all does it
warm our hearts to think we paid cash
for everything and that New Years
will not be spoiled by an influx of bills.
A good resolution to make for the
coming year would be to incur no
bills. To have things charged is pleas
ant at the time, and it seems such an
easy way to get what we want, but
when 1.-The first of the month the bill
comes in and stareS you in the face,
you feel that you are paying for them
three times over.
Women who want to be alone to
communicate with their own souls
when they do the important shopping
should go in the afternoon, as all the
women they know are apt to go in the
morning. If you can persuade your
husband to go with you, so much the
better, for he is never inclined to buy
the cheap thing you have picked out,
but will invariably get the best. Per-
haps husbands may grumble about the
bills after Christmas, but seldom do
they buy anything but the most expen-
SiVe themselves. The woman who re-
fuses to go without her husband is
wise, for she knows that he hates to
bargain, hates marked-down sales and
Will not be able to say a word after
wards if he did the buying himself
AT present-and increasingly for
week to cOme-nothing but Christmas
and what to get are the absorbing
tODicS