Today is Boxing Day in Canada (and throughout much of the former British Empire). As in the US, it's a great day for sales.
For nearly a decade, my older son (David Ricardo Palmer) has joined me in going to the Boxing Day sales first thing in the morning, and for the past six or seven years, his daughters have joined us, too. We have gone with no particular purpose, nothing that we really were looking to buy; rather, we've enjoyed the crowds and the fun.
Yesterday he texted me that we'd all meet at Walmart at 7am, but he changed it to 6am when I pointed out that's when Walmart opened this morning.
-17C with the windchill -26C. I know it's colder out west, but that's pretty cold for London, Ontario. But we still went out for the Boxing Day sales at 6am this morning.
- There were MANY fewer people than usual at Walmart, our first stop. No hussle, no bussle. No gleeful shouts as someone snagged the last big-screen tv, as we used to see. Just some shoppers. Mostly methodical. Not having the fun we thought we had seen in the past.
- Both my son and I had gone out to get additional Christmas lights. We didn't find much of what we were looking for. There were tonnes of icicle lights, and changing spot lights, and "app" lights (whatever those are). There were also strings of all red or all blue C6 LED lights, but there were no standard strings of C6 multi-coloured LED lights.
- There were still tonnes of Christmas decorations and musical toys on sale, just none that appealed to us.
- And maybe that was problem this year: in the past we had gone with vague ideas that we might buy stuff I (and we) always did, but we never had things in particular that we were hoping to buy at half price.