Christmas shopping should be considered a sport.  There is the pushing of a full cart up and down isles, lifting heavy boxes to see what they contain, the mad dash through a store to get that one item that couldn’t be found anywhere else, and the slogging of packages out to the car then into the house. We can’t forget the slaloms through the isles and islands or the dodging of other shoppers.

It is a fun time with friends, much like backpacking.  But in this case we must be surrounded by many other people, some of whom tend to irritate us.  At the end of the day, I feel like I have been hiking with a pack.

All it takes is two or three large stores with overloaded shelves and things packed into them haphazardly to wear me out.  So, yes, Christmas shopping should be a new sport.  Luckily I only participate in it a couple times a year.  This is one sport that I don’t really want to become a hobby.  However, it is similar to clothes shopping, car shopping, furniture shopping making the experience more frequent than desired.