The holiday shopping rush is now in full swing!
With 10 days left until Christmas Day and the deadline closing in on shipping, people are heading out of the door to shop in person.
A Gallup poll found that nearly half of U.S. shoppers (49%) say they will do all or most of their shopping in the month of December. Most shoppers are at different places in their Christmas gifting journey.
“Seventy-five percent done. Yeah, mostly online stuff in the last week but I still have to do some stuff with the kids at the mall and then I think I’ll be done,” said Sarah Ryor from West Hartford.
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Art Banton from Hamden said he's got a lot more to go, while Jeffrey Hebert from Berlin said he is keeping it simple by doing only gift cards.
“The presents that I buy are just for my wife. I’m pretty much set,” said Hebert.
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Several department stores are opening early to accommodate shoppers. For instance, Kohl's locations and Macy's are both opening at 8 a.m. for the rest of the holiday shopping season.
“I’m hoping to be done by the weekend. I’m going to take the 17-year-old shopping. That could be a little touchy. Hoping to be done on Saturday but maybe Sunday but then after that I’m going to start wrapping and be ready for the coming weekend,” Ryor said.
Banton said the method behind his madness is to be the early bird and beat the worm.
“I always move earlier. I have less pedestrians to deal with and I have less commotion to deal with during the day,” Banton explained.
Meanwhile, shoppers agree that there has been a lot more traffic in and out of the stores, especially during the afternoon rush.
“There’s a lot of people out. A lot of traffic on the roads. I’m not one that goes to the malls but my son and my wife, they’ve gone that way and it’s just the traffic’s really bad around the mall,” Hebert added.
The window is closing for online shoppers to get packages shipped by the big day, so expect to see more people shopping in person for that reason too.
