Watching The Christmas Shoppers

Fun weekend doing amateur anthropology - watching the Christmas shoppers at the mall!

Saw one woman at Macy's downtown plowing through a Bin O' Purses. She had ten purses arrayed on her left arm as she furiously dug with her right hand, but the more she dug the more agitated she got. Don't know why - presumably that 'special' purse had stolen away in the night, taken by Santa for some other well-deserving lady.

In contrast, the mood at the Galleria in Roseville was calm - as relaxed a group of Christmas shoppers as I have ever seen. Everyone well-dressed and well-mannered, with the ladies arrayed in pastel sweaters. I saw one kid denied his immediate wants by his father, and the kid started blubbering, but since he was behind the glass of a storefront, he looked more like a museum exhibit than a real kid.

One thing that struck me was that the shoppers weren't carrying that many shopping bags. There were several possible reasons, including:

• the majority of their shopping was already done, so they were there on Christmas Eve mostly to socialize with friends;
• they were buying smaller objects that were easier to conceal; but also maybe,
• despite all appearances, they didn't have that much money, and were socializing out of necessity than out of desire.

The last possibility might make sense if people are overextended on credit - the consumer economy of the last decade finally sailing into the coral reefs of debt. But you'd never guess on appearances alone!

There were other vignettes too:

• saw an eight-year-old girl skating by with shoes that were unfamiliar to me - a cross between roller blades and tennis shoes, with wheels on the heels only;
• saw a teenage girl with a hot pink cast on her right hand - ah, I bet there's a story there!;
• saw a man walking into Macy's with several leaf rakes - seemed pretty random;
• saw a woman with a SARS-type mask in the Food Court - wonder why?;
• saw a woman in Macy's with her three-year-old son. The boy ran ahead, reached out and touched the leg of a female mannikin, and the mother said, with an eerie high-pitched voice and a plastic grimace that would have made film director David Lynch proud: "So, you like to touch the girls!"