Christmas shopping is probably the most emotional time of the year. You have a list in your purse as long as your leg, you can’t stop eating mince pies and you’ve pretty much maxed out your budget for gifts. It’s a complete rollercoaster of love, stress, happiness and despair, but here are ten of the most powerful emotions of Christmas shopping we experience every year:
1) Confused – hang on, it’s Christmas? Last time I looked I could have sworn it was July…
2) Child-like excitement – when you’re walking through the shopping centre and all that surrounds you are Christmas trees, Santa’s Grotto and Band Aid playing on the sound system.
3) Hunger – smelling all those chocolate fountains and gingerbread lattes. All you want to do it eat but you must keep shopping, the shops close in half an hour.
4) Pain – when you realise you’ve spent the last five and a half hours adding to your mounting pile of Cadbury selection boxes, Calvin Klein boxers and Next jumpers and you’re almost certain your shoulders are about to fall off
5) Surprise – you think you’re about to pay £35 for a dress but when you take it to the counter you find out it’s actually £32.50 – bargain! Let’s buy four.
6) Suspicion – that homeless guy has just guilted you into giving him a tenner – because he’s homeless at Christmas – even though he has a brand new parka and an iPhone 6 under that suspiciously clean blanket…
7) Stress – you’ve got one month’s wage and you still have to buy for your mum, brother, cousin, boyfriend’s parents, dog, doctor, neighbour, local vicar….
8) Hatred – if that six-year-old girl in the Elsa dress sings Let It Go at 87 decibels in the coffee shop one more time…
9) Scared – uh-oh. Heavy bag. Perfume bottles. Weak fingers. Long distance to the floor. Don’t drop don’t drop don’t drop!
10) Relief – the realisation that we’re now in 2014 and that you no longer have to get dressed to do your christmas shopping. You have Amazon.
