There's no reason to stress over the December holidays when you can use my handy Shopper's Horoscope to help you through. I live to give!
ARIES: Your hard-headed, selfish, bullying nature is ideal for smashing your way to the front of any frenzied store purchase line, so you can totally wait until the last minute. You will easily plow through old ladies, toddlers, the differently-abled, and any number of portly store security guys to get YOURS, because you know YOU deserve it. Remember: you need to keep a self:others buy ratio at about 50/50. Maybe write it on your hand.
TAURUS: You are resolute, unmovable, and insanely stubborn. Use these qualities of entitled determination to argue down any store clerk for at LEAST a 20% discount on anything. You will not settle for anything less than what you want, and will hang in there until past closing time. The store manager may choose to actually pay you to leave, and you can use the extra cash to get a little something special for your therapist's stocking.
GEMINI: Your striking dual nature can really pay off at the holidays. Go buy whatever you want for your family, wrap everything beautifully, but keep the price tags, original boxes, and store receipts. Let them enjoy their gifts for a day or so, then quietly in the dead of night take everything back to the original places of purchase for a full refund. The holidays are really about sharing time with family, not crass presents, right? If anyone in your family is upset to find their gifts missing, just claim burglary and file an insurance claim. Double win!
CANCER: You are that person at the holidays, the one who assigns so much sentimentality to the season that you are likely to cry at the sight of a "Precious Moments" tree ornament. You start to decorate the house the day after Halloween, and force your pets to wear Santa costumes through January. Your problem is overextending yourself and buying so much crap for everyone that you can't pay your bills, and end up homeless and hanging out at the zoo all day by the reindeer, weeping. You are the perfect person to busy yourself in your tchotchke-choked home making homemade gifts, like pencil holders or creepy Gingerbread Man cookies.
LEO: As an insufferable, lazy, arrogant narcissist, you're already a known quantity to your friends and family, so you can totally get away with buying things YOU like, rather than what THEY would like. They will nod, smile, and seethe silently when they open up new hubcaps for your Hummer or a set of bath towels with your monogram, but will end up giving you the gift back for you to keep because they don't have any use for it. King Of The Holidays, that's you!
VIRGO: There's no one like you when it comes to the holidays, because your intensely perfectionist/OCD ways will see that you've decorated your home beautifully and wrapped the most exquisite-looking presents. Reduce your foul, fermenting anxiety by buying the exact same gift for everyone on your list, and make it something no one could possibly dislike so your fragile ego won't take any soul-crumbling hits. Think socks or baby bunnies.
LIBRA: Rather than being a well-balanced individual, you are the Bipolar Betty of the zodiac world: you're either running around like a fresh methhead or lounging so long on your couch watching Real Housewives of New Jersey that you get bedsores. Use one of your upswing days to get all your shopping done, but plan ahead: buy extra boxes of aluminum foil to use as easy wrapping paper on your "sloth" days.
SCORPIO: You loathe the holidays and everything about it, and totally resent having to do anything other than systematically plotting revenge on your boss and spouse and/or having sex with anything that moves. Screw The Man at holiday time by stealing a few Salvation Army money kettles and thoughtfully giving the cash inside to the adults on your list in lovely cards, and the coins in piggy banks to the kiddies. Your charity will be so unexpected that most of the adults may decide to sleep with you after all.
SAGITTARIUS: There's no getting around it: you are a thoughtless, immature, impulsive ass who barely connects with people long enough to have anyone to buy for at the holidays. However, you are also incredibly charming so your road to holiday happiness lies in dating a sweet-but-gullible retail store clerk for a couple of months before Christmukkah. Convince her (or him) to let you use up their total store employee discount for your gift purchases, then dump her (or him) a couple days before the event so you don't have to buy her (or him) anything.
CAPRICORN: You are the most materialistic, shallow, and cheap bastard in the zodiac. Dickens' Ebenezer Scrooge was surely a Capricorn. Make your bitter spendthrift pessimism a plus at the holidays by going through your home and re-gifting things you no longer want, like a dried-up Chia Pet, expired cough syrup, or your children.
AQUARIUS: The Weirdo Of The Zodiac, you are the one who brings chipotle-infused tofu to Christmas dinner, argues for four hours with your mother about the appropriateness of said side dish, then retreats for the rest of the night to play Call Of Duty in the basement. You are completely devoid of emotion and sentiment and you enjoy making fun of Cancer people and actual cancer victims. Your idea of holiday shopping is whatever you can scoop up from the counter displays at Walgreens when you stop to buy some cigarettes on the way to Christmas dinner. Just stick with that, you robotic freak.
PISCES: You are either a feeble-minded hippie or a smelly drunk, so holiday shopping is a particular hardship for you. You are so scatterbrained that you can't remember who you need to buy gifts for or even why, and are easily duped into buying overly-expensive presents by even the most clumsy salesperson. Solve this by asking a Virgo pal to write out your buying list, then give it to an aggressive Aries friend with your credit card on Black Friday or Christmas Eve. Have Aries bring the purchases back to Virgo for wrapping (or Libra and the aluminum foil if Virgo is being too anal about it and taking too long.) Celebrate with your bong or liter of vodka at completion.
© Copyright 2008- Marianne Spellman