The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1909-12-09
On Christmas Shopping.

and newspapers and have started out
with the determination to complete
our Christmas shopping within the
next two weeks, at least, in Difference
to the clerks and shopgirls, who wait
upon our Christmas needs. There is
another phase of the material side
of Christmas, almost equally import
ant, and that is the necessity for the
employment of wisdom and common
sense in the purchase of gifts. Few
of us shop wisely or well. We pick
up a bauble here and trifie there,
a flimsy thing across the aisle with
never a thought for the possible use
which the recipient may discover
for our gift; our one purpose being
to remember everyone we ever saw
or with whom we had a speaking &C
uuaintance. unmindful of the appro-
priateness of our bestowals. Or, our
friends are wealthy and we fret our
selves ill because we have not that
with which to purchase gifts on a
par with that which these friends
may expect from acquaintance more
largely incomed What do we do?
Instead of making a little gift which
has a bit of love with every stitch
and drop of kindly feeling with
every stroke, we haunt the shops and
drag out some costly thing which is
far beyond the limitations of our
purse and which cramps out oppor-
tuities for making less fortunate
friends happy and the wealthy
friend, if she is sensible, discerns
the strain and stretching that made
the gift possible and is made uncom-
Portable thereby.
Costly gift making should never be
allowed without the immediate fam
lily circle and then it should be en-
ployed with discretion. And it takes
so little to make a child happy. Try
it this season. Christmas gifts should
be confined to the youngsters and
the needy. Your gifts this year should
Der of coins in your purse and the
fairness of your income. What will
you contribute of your strength, your
time, your influence, your money,
yourself?' Don't give grandmother
gifts suggestive of age nor the little
tots who've never seen a doll, VOL
ume of Keats Use common sense and
plenty of it.
And on the other side which has
been discussed so much, and with
such very good reason within the
past few weeks, the shop-early idea,
the Outlook says, in most lucid and
pithy and practical style:
Christmas is at hand, and an army
of men and women are looking for
ward to the rush and WEAKNESS of
the season with dismay and some
thing very like hatred in their hearts.
For three weeks, mob of shoppers
wiz confront them, eager and i'm
patient, many of them to the last
degree exacting and inconsiderate.
Their working hours will be long and
the air they breathe heavy and moi
some; many of them will stand from
early morning until far into the
night under artificial light Not
only will the large shops be besieged
by an army of weary and often irri-
tated shoppers, but every means of
transportation will be taxed to the ut
most; delivery and express wagons
will be packed high, and n host OF
men and boys will do three months
work in three weeks; when Christ
mas morning dawns, weary thousands
viii greet it not With Joy, bul with a
sigh of relief that anothe' season oil
body-racking is past.
1T is bitter irony which has made
the great festival of Gods love fol
his children a shopping season of sucf
: intensity that those who buy and those
sell are alike brought to tie verge Of
exhaustion, and that which
ought to be an outpouring
of affection, warm and
tender expression of friendship, has
become carnival of hurried buyinf
and selling, an occasion of enormous
trade distribution. A day of joy and
Thanksgiving has become for many {
day of exhausted brain and body;
day of WEAKNESS so facilitating tina
it makes any feeling of gratitude o.
sense of obligation to God for hi
great gift mockery.
THAT men and women should wisl
to remember their friends at Christ
mas is normal expression of tn
love which the day commentaries
BUT they ought to remember tn
hundreds of thousands who stand be
hind counters hour after hour, fac
ing multitudes who do not realize tn
TAX on strength they are making b.
Pcompressing the work of a seaso
into two or three weeks.
Various organizations are maxim
appeals to shoppers to make thei
purchases at once. The Outlook III
ges upon it's readers the utmost con
sideration of those whose duty it
to stand and wait" during the week
between Thanksgiving and Christ