Inflation hits North Pole!

Are you ready? I mean really ready? Because as Trooper Terry used to say, “Hey Kids, you better come running” cause its time! Yep, only 20 more shopping days to the big day. Time to get it together and charge ahead into Christmas, and the operative word here is CHARGE! Let’s review for a moment: we have Venmo, MasterCard, American Express, Visa, PayPal, Bitcoin, and I am sure Elon will soon invent his own currency, and then there’s the “what’s in your wallet” lady. So, with all of these encouragements to buy more and more, the business of borrowing money to finance Christmas-giving has gotten bigger than Santa Claus himself. This year’s estimate of the amount the average American will spend on “good tidings to all” comes in at a chart-topping, all-time record of $1,012 per person. If you do the math, figuring there are a minimum of 3 Christmas shoppers per household, that comes to $387,572,000,000 spent on Christmas. But that’s not even close to the actual figure for last year which was a few billion over a trillion dollars. While you were dozing in the recliner recovering from Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday moved through and swept up about 10 per cent more dollars than they did last year. That means we are headed for a total 2024 tab of … well you see where this is headed. My phone doesn’t have that many zeros. Interestingly enough, the breakdown on spending has men spending more than women, Republicans spending more than Democrats, and Christians spending more than non-Christians. If you have kids under 18 at home, you will be spending about double what the empty-nest crowd spends. You probably already knew that. Right? It might be smart to make sure none of those sweet little “under-eighteen” darlings at home read this. They’ll be running calculations on the smart phone on Christmas morning making sure Santa didn’t shortchange them. The Gallup polling people say that the bright side of all of this is that the average Christmas shopper has more consumer confidence and is not deterred from a little increased spending this year and feels moderately hopeful about the future. Actually, it does seem that the general mood has lightened up a bit since the election, and regardless of your political leanings, a new group moving into Washington in January will certainly create change, and that will naturally stir up all the chickens in the coop and add a little drama to life. I guess new drama is better than the old worn-out drama, so here we go. At the very least, it will create some heightened interest and provide something new to talk about. One thing is for sure, time will move on, and this country has, for the most part, always been good about giving everybody a fair shot. If the new crowd falls short with their chance, then there will be plenty of time later for the unhappy tribe to say, “I told you so.” But in the meantime, let’s concentrate on the season of good will, and do our best to ward off the spirit of old Ebenezer, help our fellow man, and spend our portion of the “chart-topping” Christmas dollars with our local merchants. Just one last question; are you really going to wear that sweater with the blinking Rudolph nose again this year? Charge merrily ahead, shoppers!

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