Somewhere on every block there is a household with gifts already wrapped while the neighbors are still arguing about where to buy a turkey. Thanksgiving falls on Nov. 26 this year, and for a certain kind of shopper the holiday list is closed long before the pie comes out of the oven.
Personality writers have long treated that head start as a clue. A Bustle feature on the subject boils it down to three things an early finisher usually reveals, with input from UCLA psychiatry professor Dr. Gary Small and Ayurveda expert Sahara Rose. A big spending study adds a useful reality check, so here is the full picture.
The Shopper Who Finishes First
The early shopper is not a new figure. Retailers have watched Americans move holiday shopping into October for years, and the finish line keeps creeping forward. Even so, wrapping up the whole list before Thanksgiving remains rare enough to stand out, a bit like the customs collected in odd American traditions that confuse the rest of the world.
The three traits below come from the Bustle piece, with the expert attribution noted for each.
Three Things Early Gift Shoppers Tend to Reveal
1. They are prompt, organized and efficient. Dr. Gary Small of UCLA says conscientious people are prompt, organized and efficient, which is why they tend to finish early. Less conscientious people, he notes, are more likely to put shopping off. Households that finish early also have time to sort out travel, such as one luggage set for the whole family or carry-on suitcases that skip the checked-bag fee. The same trait shows up in other small habits, such as the ones in this look at people who mail holiday cards every December.
2. They plan ahead well. A finished list in early November takes a calendar, a list of names and a little foresight, the kind of steady routine found in little rituals that once structured the season. Dr. Small adds a caution in the same piece: early shoppers can undercut their own planning by stressing about the future, so the advice is to plan what can be planned and still enjoy the season. Even organized shoppers can slip, which is why a list of holiday shopping mistakes to avoid before Black Friday is worth a skim.
3. They stick to a set budget. Sahara Rose, a health coach and Ayurveda expert, links early shopping to what she calls pitta types, who in her words love to get things done ahead of time. She says they often shop online and keep set budgets, while vata types usually shop after Thanksgiving and put their effort into handmade or personalized gifts. A budget matters to many households: Walmart’s holiday survey found that 43.8% of shoppers call affording the holidays their top stressor. Rose’s framework is one practitioner’s view of personality types, not a measured trait, so it works best as a conversation starter.
What a Large Spending Study Found
A real data check exists. Researchers Sara J. Weston, Joe J. Gladstone, Eileen K. Graham, Daniel K. Mroczek and David M. Condon published “Who Are the Scrooges?” in Social Psychological and Personality Science. They linked personality surveys to about 2.2 million bank transactions from a UK money management app, covering 2,133 people, and measured holiday spending as total debit transactions in November and December.
The findings are a mixed bag for the early-shopper theory. Spending was positively associated with extraversion and conscientiousness at first, and negatively with neuroticism. After controlling for age, gender, income and prior spending, neuroticism and openness were negatively associated with holiday spending, conscientiousness was only weakly positive, and the authors did not treat that as sufficient evidence. They describe the effects as small. Most relevant here, the study found no significant interaction between personality and the day of the holiday season, so it could not tell early planners from last-minute shoppers.
In other words, being organized may not predict when the shopping happens, and a tight budget does not simply follow from a calendar. Psychology Today blogger Jennifer V. Fayard, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology at Ouachita Baptist University, summarized the same research and noted that personality explains only part of holiday spending, and that spending less does not make anyone a Scrooge.
Early, Late or Somewhere In Between
Money pressure is another driver for many households, and a budget-minded shopper may simply start sooner for that reason.
Finishing the list by Thanksgiving may say something real about planning and prompt habits. It does not say anything about generosity, taste or holiday spirit, and the late shopper with a handmade gift is doing just fine.
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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: Trogain – CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia Commons
