LATE SHOPPING CROWDS

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21354, 22 December 1934, Page 14

LATE SHOPPING CROWDS

+ YESTERDAY IN THE CITY, BRISK BUSINESS Everybody is told to "shop early" at Christmas time, and nearly everybody fails to take that excellent advice. Many plans are made for early , shopping expeditions and early postings, and some of these plans are, perhaps, carried into effect. But any postman will say, and any shop assistant will support him, that the widely advertised slogan, "Shop early this Christmas," is honoured rather in the breach than the observance. If any proof were needed, it would have been found in the city streets yesterday afternoon or last evening. Although the street collectors were out in force, and although the weather was not altogether congenial for wandering in crowded streets, the city's attractions yesterday proved irresistible to many thousands of people. All day long they surged through the streets and shops, some of them bent on pleasure, but most of them on very serious business—the selection of halfforgotten gifts or the choice of the most important gift of all, always left to the last. Unfortunately perhaps. many decisions were postponed: there are still two shopping days before Christmas, and it is very hard to make up the mind when there are two more days. Heavy Buying This has been a difficult week for the shop assistants. The weather has been trying, the crowds have been unending", and the wrapping-up has been more constant than usual. People are buying more this year, they are demanding more attention, and they are more difficult to please because the shops have provided such a disturbing variety of goods. This very fact has done more than anything else to defeat the intention of the "shop early" slogan; but shopping late, if it has its miseries, has its many jollities to outweigh them.

Taken one by one, the members of a Christmas shopping crowd are dismal enough figures, but, taken in the mass, they are remarkably stimulating. Last night it was stimulating enough even to be in the crowd. There were chatterings r.nd squabblings, dartings backwards and forwards, fond lingerings over ex-pensive-looking novelties, frantic searches through shelves of Christmas cards, spontaneous greetings and elbow collisions, snatches of song and music from open doors, bangs and squeaks from balloons, and shrill hoots from imprisoned motor-cars. The insides of the shops were like basements on bargain days, and the pavements were like sheep races. But Christmas Eve has still to come: the shop people will certainly have earned a holiday.