Article & Journal Resources

Larissa Dubecki

A SEASONAL quiz: Is the embodiment of Christmas, a) joyful times spent with family members, or b) a soul-destroying hour spent finding a car-park space at Chadstone shopping centre before panic-spending on perfunctory gifts?

Those who fall into the first category: season's greetings. The other 99% of readers might take comfort from emerging theories that Christmas has become a mass-scale social experiment on the limits of psychological endurance.

Previously identified syndromes include trolley rage, car-park rage, escalator rage, Christmas tree rage, wrapping rage and roast rage. The amateur psychologist observing behaviour at Chaddy yesterday could have added the following: declined credit card rage, no size 10 rage, screaming children at Toys 'R' Us rage and "I never know what to buy for your mother" rage.

The only way to circumvent the seasonal oxymoron of "stress-free shopping" is to ignore Christmas altogether, or to do your present-buying on a Monday morning in September. To most time-poor Australians, planning well in advance for Christmas now means doing the shopping on the second Sunday before the big day.

According to a Deloitte-Australian Retailers Association survey released today, a staggering 70% of people planned to complete their shopping on Christmas Eve.

This is not welcome news to the season's whipping boys (and girls) — the shop assistants who bear the brunt of customer meltdown. The Age, armed with its mental copy of Debrett's Guide to Etiquette and Modern Manners, braved Chadstone yesterday in search of Christmas cheer. It proved relatively easy to find manchester, cookbooks, dog biscuits, socks'n'jocks, even — at a pinch — a partridge in a pear tree. There was also, speaking to a sample portion of Victoria's 320,000 retail employees, an abundance of Christmas jeer.

Shop assistants have seen it all. Customers abusing them over a declined Eftpos card or shoving each other over the last piece of Le Creuset cookware in royal blue. Trolleys — some containing young children — being rammed as shoppers jostle for supremacy.

Some first-hand testimony from the workers at the Christmas coalface:

■"If I hear Mariah Carey sing All I Want for Christmas Is You one more time, I'm going to scream." — Emma, Best and Less.

■"Please and thank you are nice. And someone who makes an effort to say hello back. I'm not trying to ruin people's day by greeting them." — Anonymous, Jetty Surf.

Psychologist Erica Frydenberg says it's important to remember that Christmas is for many a time of extreme stress fuelled by the breakneck pace of life. Ironically, it's the expectation of peace, joy and goodwill that fuels the pressure, until some people blow a fuse at the nearest stranger.

"A Christmas shopping day is inherently stressful, but people can't use that as an excuse to lash out at each other. They need to identify what triggers their stress and act to defuse it," says Dr Frydenberg

And when all else fails, remember: shop assistants have more of an excuse to hate Christmas than you do.