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Last-Minute Christmas Shoppers Swarm Manhattan Stores

By Amy Zimmer | December 24, 2010 3:43pm | Updated on December 25, 2010 10:51am

By Amy Zimmer

DNAinfo News Editor

MANHATTAN — Last-minute shoppers swarmed New York stores Friday to stock up on gifts or food for their Christmas meals.

Orlando Lao braced himself for a full day of shopping Friday, hitting his first store, a video game shop in Inwood, where he lives, at 8 a.m. Then he hit Macy’s where he bought slippers for a "bunch of females," a bathrobe for his mom and cologne for a teenager relative, since "that’s when you start getting interested in girls and need to smell nice."

"I'm one of the procrastinators," said Lao, 25, a data entry worker who said he was too busy with his church youth group to find shopping time. "I knew I was going to get paid today, so I waited. But when I’m done, I'm just going to grub and watch the kids enjoy."

Next up was Babies R Us and Target and then maybe back to the game store if he couldn’t find a cheaper Wii.

Shoppers nationwide said they planned to spend an average of $658 for holiday gifts this season, up from $417 last year and $431 in 2008, according to the twenty-fifth annual holiday spending survey by the American Research Group. But 55 percent said they would wait to buy gifts on sale, compared to last year’s 53 percent and 2008’s 50 percent.

Waiting for sales didn’t delay Jacqueline Molina, 42, a police officer in Washington, D.C., home in New York for the holidays. She just couldn’t trudge through the Macy’s crowds to find what her siblings wanted.

"I was here yesterday and didn’t find anything, so I came today thinking there wouldn’t be many people here," she said, surprised by the crowd. "I'm too tired for this."

Instead, she got them gift cards, even though she would have preferred something more personal.

The Sexton family got to the Whole Foods at Union Square just after 9 a.m. to beat the long lines they remembered snaking out the store on Thanksgiving Day.

But they weren’t stressed.

"This is not last-minute," said Brendan Sexton, who was stocking up for a feast for 30. "Talk to me at midnight." They got a pre-cooked organic ham and were planning to make ravioli since "not a lot of guests eat meat," and tempeh, since "not a lot eat dairy."

He was looking forward to hosting his 10 kids, three grandchildren and others coming from as far away as California and Canada, but joked, "There will always be a disaster no matter what we do. Where will people sit?"

Deborah Anderson, 40, a British-born photographer who moved to New York recently from Los Angeles, is keeping her Christmas dinner at 10 to make sure everyone can sit around the table.

"Everyone is calling from L.A. with the weather, but I love it. I’m going ice skating in Central Park, and I’ve been singing carols in my apartment all week long,” said Anderson buying a free-range turkey from the Di Paola Farm stand at the Union Square Greenmarket.

She didn’t, however, find her favorite thing here.

"Someone from London is coming tomorrow with Christmas pudding," she said of the rich, fruity British dessert eaten with rum butter. "I always get a stomach ache. It definitely doesn't sit well, but it's a tradition."