Christmas Eve shoppers bring last-minute business to area stores

With Christmas Day mere hours away Tuesday, shoppers made trips to purchase final gifts and stores stayed open for last-minute business.

Reggie Reed, manager of Kirlin's Hallmark in West Park Mall in Cape Girardeau, has worked in retail for 32 years, about half of that being with the card and collectibles

store.

By noon, business on Christmas Eve had been "spurty," and many of the store's customers were men making sure their wives received that Christmas card, Reed said.

"Yesterday was crazy," along with all of last week, she said. "Which is great."

Snow during the first weekend of December closed the store early Thursday, shut it down Friday, and business over the weekend remained slow, Reed said, taking a toll on sales. But Reed thinks it will even out in the end, and the store will be busy with day-after-Christmas shoppers.

Kirlin's Hallmark is a "gift-giving store," and most customers who shop there are buying gifts for other people, not for themselves, Reed said.

"That makes it a different atmosphere," she said, which is one of the things Reed enjoys about working Christmas Eve.

Wanda Howard of Millersville waited at the mall for her daughter's help with her last-minute Christmas shopping.

Howard works night shifts as a lab technician at Gilster-Mary Lee and sleeps during the day. She had done no Christmas shopping and planned to knock out buying gifts for her three children, five grandchildren, in-laws and parents in one

day.

"I just kept putting it off and putting it off," she said of Christmas shopping.

Howard was not the only one. Families, couples, men and women shuffled in and out of stores Christmas Eve at the mall in Cape Girardeau.

Bill Beggs and his wife shopped Christmas Eve to get some last-minute deals and were at the mall to use coupons before they expired.

Abby Perdue and her mother held bags of their last gifts for family members. Abby Perdue said unlike the malls in St. Louis, where she lives, she can be in and out of the Cape Girardeau mall in a few minutes.

The west side of Cape Girardeau was not the only part of the city staying busy with shoppers.

Working on Christmas Eve is sort of a family tradition for Sherry and Mike Yaeger, owners of Renaissance, 139 N. Main St. in Cape Girardeau.

The couple and their family run the home décor store while the rest of the employees take Christmas Eve off, Sherry Yaeger said. The family has been doing so for the last 13 years.

"It's the end cap on really the whole year for us," Sherry Yaeger said.

The snowstorm earlier in the month hurt business, she said, but the store has bounced back.

The couple predicted its usual busy day of shoppers grabbing discounted merchandise on the day after Christmas.

ashedd@semissourian.com

388-3632

Pertinent addresses:

3049 William St, Cape Girardeau, MO

139 N. Main St., Cape Girardeau, MO

Millersville, MO