Tis The Season To Go Shopping

Today it starts... the dizzying, confusing, tiring, running around, bargain hunting yet wallet breaking and oh so fun process of finding a Christmas gift for our dear loved ones.
It's always an interesting process for me, one that I have such high hopes for at the beginning of my shopping season but slowly I become slightly disheartened as I run out of time, still not having found that "perfect" gift. Sadly, by the end (should I be admitting this?) with a few short days, sometimes hours, left I end up getting gifts for these special people that are, in my opinion, less than what I had hoped. I feel I settled just so I can quickly wrap something up and throw it under the tree.
So this year, in the hopes of trying to keep that scenario from happening, I started early, here and now, today.
So far I spent 4 hours shopping and bought 2 gifts. I'm not sure what that says about my ability here.
The problems lies in that I want each person to understand, through our gifts how much we truly love them. I want them to be as happy to receive our gifts as we are to give it. To me, giving a gift to someone is saying, "I love you, you are important to me, take this gift as a way of me showing my gratitude for just being who you are and being in my life." That's a lot to expect out of a gift so to find something that says that, well it takes time. And frankly I have to wonder if the fuzzy cozy socks I give someone communicates this effectively enough. But since I truly love fuzzy cozy socks, that's what it would say if someone gave that particular gift to me. (that's not really TOO big a hint though.)
However, I must keep in mind, in the process of going from store to store, comparing prices, colors, styles and similar items, that it's not really about gifts. Is it just me or do we get so consumed with finding (or getting) that perfect gift that we lose sight of the sacredness of the season? In the hunting down and giving of gifts this year, lets try to stay focused on THE Gift.
Gifts are nice and its fun to walk through the stores, seeing the decorations and getting a spring in your step as you listen to the Christmas music fill the air, but it's getting to be so much about the gifts and "what will I get this year" that Christmas is more about the boxes wrapped in shiny paper under the tree than a Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes laying in a manger.
I want to take this season slow (hard to do I know, when the stores are shoving it down your throat before Halloween.) I want to savor it and rejoice in the reason for our celebrations! Christ, the promised One, is here! Not, Santa, the fat little red man who gives us stuff.
The season will soon be here (but it's NOT here yet people!) and I'm excited because I love Christmas and all it is but let's prepare our hearts for more than decorating a tree, singing Jingle Bells and opening presents around a fire. Let's prepare for the miracle that was God coming to earth as a baby, born of a virgin, to save us all.