Six Shopping Days ‘Til Christmas for the Highly Sensitive Person

In the U.S., the Christmas shopping season officially begins the day after Thanksgiving. But for me, that’s when my shopping season officially ends.

From Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day, I avoid the stores as much as possible. And if I must go shopping, I go late at night or early in the morning. There are several reasons why, and they all have to do with the trait of high sensitivity.

About the Trait of High Sensitivity

In case you’re unfamiliar with the trait of high sensitivity, I’ll give you a bit of an explanation. For one thing, highly sensitive people tend to experience other people’s emotions. It’s a challenging process for many to learn to differentiate their own emotions from the emotions of those around them.

In addition to feeling other people’s emotions, highly sensitive people feel, to varying degrees, spiritual influences in the environment. These are things to which less sensitive people tend to be oblivious (unless they are empowered with the Holy Spirit’s spiritual gifts – I Corinthians 14). Once again, it can be quite the learning curve to distinguish between what is one’s own dynamics and what has its origins in the spiritual environment.

As I’ve watched highly sensitive persons grow into their created design, I’ve noticed that they develop a personal clarity on differentiating their sensing of outside stimuli from their own inner processes. One outcome of this is that they take more care to set helpful boundaries for themselves.

Experiencing the Stores and Malls

So in light of these observations about high sensitivity, lets look at the stores and malls during the five week holiday and Christmas season.

First, during this season there’s a teeming mass of humanity crowded into the stores, many of whom are emoting stress.

Then there’s the sad or idealistic holiday songs playing loudly in the background. For some people, these songs stir feelings of loss or of being left out of everyone else’s holiday cheer. The result is that melancholic and desperate people throughout the stores emote feelings of loss, abandonment, and rejection.

And then there are the highly sensitive people being inflicted by these secondhand stressed, sad, and desperate feelings winging around the store, and responding with their own high-pitched stress. Then factor in the emotions of the abusive self-talk used to push themselves on.

Altogether it’s a bit much.

And That Extra Little . . .

In addition, there’s an invisible and insidious force in the atmosphere of the stores during the holidays. I can feel it from the moment I walk into a store during the holiday season. I’ve mentioned it to other highly sensitive persons who know exactly what I mean.

To us, it’s a force as tangible as the Christmas decorations and as strong as hunger.

I don’t know what it is, but what it does is pull on a person’s soul and makes them hungry to buy stuff they would otherwise never be interested in. Or hungry to buy stuff they want but can’t afford. It’s like it generates an appetite to freely and senselessly celebrate by willy-nilly spending money.

Personally, I hate the feeling of it pulling on me as I try to shop. But people don’t have to be conscious of it to be influenced by it. Over the years I’ve watched as people walk into a store and come under its sway utterly unaware. And I hate watching it as much as feeling it.

Choices and No Thank You’s

If I sound like a Scrooge, I’m really not. I enjoy the holidays – Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year. But I live this season in a peaceful, low-key, non-hurried manner.

Basically, what I do is buy most of my gifts before the holidays, give myself choices rather than mandates, and say polite variations on “No, thank you” a lot.

A Blessing For You

God bless all you who can cope with shopping during the holidays. And may God have mercy on all of you who can’t cope with it but have to shop anyway. And may God provide bountiful grace for those of you who work retail — may His peace and strength overcome the stresses of the season.

But for those of you who have a choice, this is your “six more shopping days until Christmas” reminder.

Blessings!

Gail Ruth