Thanks to the sky-high loonie, my goal to cut down on holiday shopping will likely go out the window.

Don’t get me wrong — as a Christmas fanatic, I love trolling the malls during the holiday season so I can see the sparkle in children’s eyes as they approach fake-bearded mall Santas.

Sarah Boesveld

I’m one of the few tall people at the Santa Claus Parade that doesn’t have a two-year-old perched on my shoulders.

Despite my enthusiasm for the holidays, I vowed to cut back on the shopping. Two presents for each sister, rather than the usual six (which only happens when I get carried away, I swear). What I was doing was ridiculous in the first place, especially on a student’s line of credit.
But like the average shopper, I’m easily seduced by a good deal. It’s the same disease I get when I shop at Target in the United States and everything seems so much cheaper than it does at Zellers, Target’s Canadian counterpart.

I end up buying crap I don’t need.

This is exactly what I expect will happen to me this season and it’s all thanks to the superhero of a loonie.

With the high dollar kicking off holiday shopping season, we’re going to be deluded by the low figures on new price tags Sears has started slapping on its merchandise. Wal-Mart and other big-box retailers are following suit. Indigo has full-page ads in daily newspapers reassuring shoppers that Heather Reisman and other corporate book giants are indeed not profiting from the high-flying loonie. They’ve already started by taking a hacksaw to their book prices.

It might be premature to talk about the holiday season, but since the Bay and Sears have lavishly adorned their aisles with twinkling lights, holly and ivy, there’s no doubt  folks have started seriously thinking about creating holiday wish lists.

And this year, they’ll likely get most of what they’re asking for, whether they’re naughty or nice.

This buying power associated with the lower loonie will make the October decorating frenzy seem worth the way-too-early and over-the-top expression of holiday spirit.

This is going to send shoppers on retail binges, especially us vulnerable student-types. Well, perhaps only those with shopping problems to begin with.

We’re going to be hoarding goodies, thanks to our dollar hitting $1.08 US Tuesday – a record high for a loonie that has been below parity for 31 years.

While I got a C- in first-year microeconomics, I learned a bit about what this means from following recent news reports.

There are two sides of the coin. Retailers are sweating because it’s a lot of work to change prices, and all the while they’re seeing valuable sales from American tourists declining.

I don’t think they should be worried. What better time for the loonie to soar than the holidays, otherwise known as retail prime time?
Economists are expecting the dollar to rise even more before settling just below parity in the near future.

This is all the more reason to buy while we can. It’s also a good opportunity for Canadians who have long had North American inferiority complexes to thumb their noses at their neighbours to the south who have taken advantage of our historically weak dollar for too long. 

But this holiday season, while we may have fewer American tourists, we’ll have more opportunities for Santa to keep busy.