Every family’s Thanksgiving celebration has its own traditions. It might be special foods that are enjoyed but once a year. For others, it is games after dinner, maybe dominoes, cards or football. For others, the big tradition is planning Friday’s shopping spree to kick off the Christmas shopping season.
Indeed, today’s edition of The Gazette, like most daily newspapers today, is designed to help. Inside this edition, you’ll find our annual Gift Guide plus 14 other advertising inserts for sales that often begin before the crack of dawn on Friday. Many people thrive on the thrill of camping in lines before stores open so they can grab the hottest deals. Others enjoy the adrenaline rush of racing for the best bargains. Still others decide to stay home on Black Friday but still use the advertisements to plan their shopping list as the days count down to Christmas.
Whatever your preference, we want to encourage you to remember Emporia’s retailers when making your plans. As we worked on a story for today’s Gift Guide about gifts in the $25-and-under category, we were delighted to find hidden treasures in Emporia.
Although we usually cruise right past all of RJ’s Cake and Candy Supply’s displays of items to help you bake and decorate cakes or make homemade candy — preferring instead to peruse the shelves of used paperbacks in The Paperback Shack at the back of the building — we discovered that owner Ruth Jackson keeps a nice inventory of good-quality aluminum bakeware that isn’t limited to use for cakes and cookies.
We also looked closer at the gift section at Bluestem Farm and Ranch Supply. Again, we usually cruise past it as we’re heading to pick up something in the hardware section or a belt for the lawn mower. We were delighted with the wide selection of items.
And we know that local merchants are happy to order items when we’ve asked.
We’ve found quick turnaround when staff at Town Crier has ordered books for us. And when the corporate office of Bath and Body Works quit shipping our favorite shampoo to the Emporia store, manager Peggy Ziegler sprang into action after hearing that we don’t normally get to Wichita to shop at the store there. Ziegler called her counterpart in Wichita, arranged a credit card sale for us over the telephone and had the items shipped to the Emporia store — at no extra charge.
The key is to ask for what you’re trying to find. Many local retailers — even the mom-and-pop shops — use wholesalers who supply different gift lines. Turnaround time for a special order could be much quicker than you think.
Of course, the closer you get to Christmas Day, the less likely special ordering will work.
We encourage all our readers to explore Emporia for their Christmas gift needs. If you don’t want to risk injury in the early-morning Black Friday stampedes, spend Friday cruising through stores throughout town.
We’re sure you’ll be revising your gift list when you spot something you’d never thought of before for Dad, Grandma or others.
Gwendolynne Larson
Executive Editor
trashman (anonymous) says...
The paper wants us to shop at home, yet has the paper printed in another town. Is this hypocritical or what?
November 27, 2009 at 8:23 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )