Flora Zhu's Blog

We all love Christmas. The sweet moist scent of gingerbread cookies, wearing your mother’s ugly handmade (and extremely itchy) christmas sweater, the crackling of flames licking at the cedar wood in the fireplace bring signifying  “cheeriest time of the year” is back again.

(http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2013/10/22/Toy-Brands-Holiday-Promos-102213.aspx)

It appears that many retail companies have allowed a head start on the Christmas shopping, in reference to Brand channel, many companies such as Walmart, Best Buy, and Toy’s R us are “more interested to make hay early in the season because the forecast for Christmas spending this year is cloudy at best.” The fear that the economic scrooge will negatively impact holiday shopping, by jumping onto the early holiday train and hoping to cash in before the chaotic holiday slug drags in has allowed companies to start holiday promotions earlier this year.

Despite all the love and cheer in the air, Christmas can prove itself to be an extremely stressful time for many individuals (source: National Post). The pressure to get the perfect gift, increased demand for rare items, additional christmas parties, the desire to maintain an attractive physical appearance despite the abundance of festive feasts put a lot of mental stress and physical stress on consumers. Higher death rates have been recorded on Christmas day, boxing day and New years. However, the environmental factors have to be considered as well.

Then again, there is no fault on getting a jump start on one’s Christmas shopping because in the end, Christmas is about giving, loving and family time. There is no harm in allowing the little ones snuggle up in their beds  and dream about the Jolly old man and his annual trip down from the North pole.