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The refrigerator door closing on the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers signals the beginning of the Christmas shopping season, my least favorite time of the year.

Oh, I love Christmas: holly and evergreen boughs, our tree decorated with ornaments made by our daughter in Vacation Bible School, red ribbons wound everywhere, sparkling lights, the scent of beeswax candles, a kitchen warmed by baking cookies, the joyful celebration of faith and kindness among strangers.

On second thought, nix that last one if you go Christmas shopping in a big city.

Remember Black Friday in 2008 when a worker at Walmart in Long Island was trampled to death by an aggressive crowd of shoppers?

Closer to home and more annoying than deadly, I’ve been cut off from parking spots, stuck in police-directed traffic trying to get into shopping centers, and I’ve stood in slow-moving lines in overheated stores in Greensboro trying to pay for purchases.

According to information released from the U.S. Census Department, we spent $52.2 billion shopping last December, a little more than half of it in brick-and-mortar stores and the balance through the Internet and catalogs.

Department stores reported a 40 percent increase in sales in December sales over November, but specialty stores saw even greater increases.

Sporting goods stores sales increased 62 percent, book stores sales rose 95 percent, and jewelry stores hit the jackpot with a 125 percent increase in sales November to December.

That’s a lot of people, a lot of shopping, and that was in a recession.

I’ve always thought that the Friday after Thanksgiving was the biggest shopping day of the year. But, according to snopes.com, Black Friday isn’t the biggest sales day of the year.

While there are a lot of shoppers out there, sales typically drop again before gaining momentum into December. The biggest sales day of the year tends to be the last Saturday before Christmas each year. I guess we are a nation of procrastinators. 

I’ve tried all sorts of methods to ease the pain of Christmas shopping. I used to have a rule that all my shopping had to be done before Thanksgiving. In recent years, I’ve gotten lax on that.

I’ve shopped on the night of Black Friday and found that there were no crowds but the stores look like war zones and the clerks resemble the walking dead. That was just too depressing. I’ve shopped online, but it’s hard to find special treasures that way.

Last year, I had the most pleasant Christmas shopping experience of my life. One Saturday afternoon in December, my husband, Tim, and I went to downtown Eden. We had to slow down for a couple of deer crossing the road but that was the only traffic jam we encountered that day.

I bought a gossip bench for my mother at Elaine’s Antiques. It reminded me of the one my grandma used to have her black, party-line phone sitting on when I was a child.

As we worked to get it into the trunk of my small car, a couple of women stopped on the street to talk to us about similar memories.

While we chatted, I smelled the heavenly aroma of a Christmas-blend coffee wafting out of the door of Riverhouse Gift and Gourmet.

Once the bench was secure, we went in and I bought some Snickerdoodle coffee for our office and picked up a beautiful glass cardinal Christmas ornament.

The store was busy but the clerks were helpful and friendly, and the strangers really were kind.

Such is life and Christmas shopping in Rockingham County.

Joni Carter lives in the Bethany community.Contact her at writetojonicarter@gmail.com