The Season of Saving

Though I've yet to find a reasonably reliable statistic on this, I do wonder how much people spend on themselves during the Christmas season. Not out of selfishness necessarily, but out of convenience and affordability.

Every year around Halloween my mom sends all of us kids a friendly but pointed reminder: if we want gifts, we have to send her a list of suggestions now. Tasked with coming up with a list on the spot, we almost always forget about half the things we've spent all year saying "I should ask for this for Christmas." I thought I'd gotten a jump on things in August when I started a list of things I need or would like as I thought of them, but I still managed to miss a bunch of things. Add on all those things that you have been ogling in stores for 11 months but don't want to waste a Christmas wish on, and suddenly you find yourself with a large list of stuff you can't ask anyone for but know deep in your heart you want more than that green sweater you did have the insight to ask for.

Enter sales season.

Black Friday, as well as the ensuing clusterfudge of sales that have penetrated this most joyous of seasons, is no secret. And it seems every year the deals get just a little better, and last just a little longer.

For me, Black Friday is easy to skip. I do most of my shopping before hand anyway (and have gotten into the habit of buying everything online), so I know that I'll only go and spend money I don't need to spend on myself. I'm tempted a little by the online sales, but even those deals aren't stellar on Black Friday. Saturday I gave in a little, but with perfectly good reason: I needed a washer and dryer because the new house didn't come with one, and I knew what I could spend and how good of a deal I had to get in order to buy it from a store. I even ignored Cyber Monday deals - to be fair there weren't a lot of great ones this year.

But by today, Wednesday, all was lost. My willpower was shot up worse than then German Air Force in WWII, and buy.com sent me an email detailing all of the great things I've been drooling over but never had good reason to buy. My first guilty pleasure was a compact camcorder. At 70% off, who could resist? And my second guilty pleasure was a mp3 player that would work with Napster, which rang in at a beautiful 88% off.

I admit, I was ashamed to press the "place order" button. This is supposed to be a season of giving, not getting for me. I feel the need to go caroling or donate time to a soup kitchen just to clear my conscious.

I wonder though, how many spend more on themselves during the last month then on others? How much does the average person spend on themselves? Is it wrong to spend so much on ourselves, even in a time of such savings?

Which is a better title for the holidays - the season of giving or the season of saving?