More seasonal retail misery

(A belated post, started some weeks ago, but only finished now)

What with the Christmas shopping, and then the January Sales, I've recently had plenty of opportunity (much as I did about this time last year), to remind myself just how hateful the retail experience can be. This time around, my children are bigger, more aware of what's going on, and hence more vocal about their own feelings on the process. These feelings appear to be crystallised: when looking at Barbie Princess dolls they are very much pro the modern commercial Christmas, whereas whilst shopping for anything else they whine incessantly without pausing to draw breath. My soundtrack for the 2008/2009 Yuletide Retail Hellhole Experience would be the endless looped repetition of Christmas music but with the lyrics drowned out by children howling atonally that they are tired/hungry/have done a poo.
Our Christmas 'big food shop' (AKA "let's give Tesco all of our hard-earned money for way too much food that we won't eat and will ultimately throw away") warrants further discussion, starting with the truly bizarre idea my wife had about it: she thought it would be 'fun'.
"Fun?" I asked, genuinely taken aback. "Fun?"
"Yes - fun. If you let it, it could be fun. You know - picking out special treats, getting caught up in the festive mood..."
"Ugh. It won't be fun. It will be Hell, only with boxes of dates and tins and Quality Street.."
Of course, it wasn't fun. It was dire. Shopping in supermarket is always dire, but during the holidays it's far, far worse: not only are the stores crammed to capacity, but many of the extra seasonal visitors are people like me, who have been dragged there against there will. This means the crowds are not only unusually large, but also overly resentful - and it only takes a small incident, like somebody else picking up the bag of satsumas that you had your eye on, for things to turn really ugly...
My own experience was not improved by my youngest daughter, who discovered that when seated in the child seat at the front of a trolley that I was pushing, she could easily reach up and gather in her tiny fist both of the drawstrings for the hood on my sweatshirt. She could then suddenly tug hard on these, which would collapse the hood into a tight, painful viewing-port centred around my nose. If the drawstrings were then yanked harder, she could physically drag my hooded face down onto the handle of trolley, forcing me into a bent-double position that enabled her to repeatedly kick me in the chest while I flailed blindly at her. She found this hilarious, (as in fact did many onlookers), though it must be said I got tired of it pretty quickly...
When we finally got into the checkout queue and were told that the average waiting time in the line was approaching an hour, all three of us - both of the children and me - turned mutinous. Sensing a possible impending 'incident', my wife sent me and my charges to the cafe to buy a hot drink and a snack, while she stayed and nobly queued. Sadly, this brilliant plan of distraction failed on two counts: firstly the queue at the cafe was so long and slow-moving that my youngest actually fell asleep in the line while sitting on my feet and leaning on my shins, and secondly, just as we had finally sat down with our drinks, my wife appeared looking flustered, to announce that the shopping had all been rung up on the checkout but she has forgotten her credit card, so could I drop everything and come back and pay? Quickly? Only she had noticed that the people in the queue behind her weren't taking the delay that well...
When we got back to checkout, the man waiting in the queue behind us gave me such a filthy look that I felt compelled to draw out the payment process for as long as possible just to spite him: 'forgetting' my PIN for two attempts, changing the card I used at the last minute, suddenly remembering my loyalty card, pointing out a random item that I decided we hadn't actually put in the trolley and asking for it to be taken off the bill - that sort of thing. He looked apoplectic by the end. I was tempted to smile and nod, and wish him a Merry Christmas as we left, but it seemed a bit much...