Some People Wait Until Today (Christmas Eve) to Buy Christmas Gifts--for Various Reasons

It is Christmas Eve. Some people have their Christmas shopping done months before the holiday. Then, others wait until there are literally less than 24 hours until Christmas to do much of any shopping. Why, though? There are good and bad reasons.

There are lots of silly stereotypes about men, but a chunk of them seem to live up to the, "Not very thoughtful about gifts," concept with a significant number waiting until Christmas Eve to look for a gift for their female or male partner. This can result in panic-buying crappy gifts, but some guys apparently just dread shopping and put it off due to being perfectionists who want to get a good gift and keep second-guessing themselves before ending up with something lame (ironically enough). Then some guys just love the rush of waiting until the last second or don't really care about getting a gift and wait until its essentially mandatory to finally buy something.

A lot of people (men and women) wait because they're simply exhausted by other things in life (work, kids), and stacking the holidays on top of that is a lot. Buying gifts for everyone can be overwhelming and takes a piece of the mental load some folks don't have to spare.

Also--and a bit depressingly--some people just don't have the money to buy gifts until it is the utter last minute due to saving up for that great gift and needing one more check to be able to afford what the kids/partner/etc. has asked for. The economy can be rough for sure.

Whether you're putting off getting gifts for a silly reason like thinking it is fun to wait, too drained to shop, or lack the funds, I don't judge you. We all have our reasons. I'm someone who likes to try to buy presents earlier, but I'll also stumble on that, "Last cool thing," when time's almost up for Hanukkah or Christmas shopping, so I can see the benefits of getting gifts for folks well in advance or waiting a bit. At the end of the day, it isn't necessarily about the presents themselves, it's about showing the love we feel for the friends/family/and so forth we're giving the gifts to, right? Well, for some people it really is all about the gifts, but you know what I mean.