Thomas MacEntee at Geneabloggers is encouraging us to celebrate the 2011 Christmas season with a series of posts called the Advent Calendar of Memories. This is today’s entry.

How did your family handle Christmas Shopping? Did anyone finish early or did anyone start on Christmas Eve?

Christmas cooking might have been left to the last minute, but Christmas shopping, almost never.

I say almost never because one year when our daughters were all still in their teens, I actually wrapped the presents early –something that virtually never happens. Much to my horror I appeared to have nothing for our youngest daughter. As next morning was Christmas Eve, I did an assault on one the biggest shopping centres (malls) in town, the minute the place opened. Believe me with that shopping centre, near where I worked, you had to be there extremely early or you’d be circling like a shark looking for a carpark for hours. Mission accomplished her gifts were wrapped and Christmas went without a hitch.

Imagine my astonishment some months later when, tidying the cupboards, I found the sleeping bag I’d bought for her well in advance of Christmas! If I recollect correctly she got her second Christmas present there and then before it got lost in the cupboards again!