Last-Minute Shoppers Hit Naperville's Downtown

Some shoppers revel in buying Christmas gifts early. They plan and plot and carry out their early-shopping strategy, then sit back on Christmas Eve gloating at how organized they are.

Then there are those who wait. They wait until they can wait no longer. Long lines and parking problems are no match for the last-minute shopper.

The streets and sidewalks of downtown Naperville were bustling this week with shoppers out searching for those last few Christmas presents.

Patrick Tietjen, of Naperville, was carrying a few bags, including one from , as he made the rounds downtown Wednesday.

"I always put it off," he said about Christmas shopping.

He can't complain, he said, because his wife does most of the shopping. So he needed to buy only a few other things, including a gift for his wife and for his father.

Rather than hitting the mall first, Tietjen said he heads downtown to see what he can find. But there were still a few things on his list that were going to require him to make that trip to the mall.

For the most part, he said the shopping was going well.

Nina Khazen, of Naperville, said she still had some more shopping to do after her most recent trip out.

She was doing "just a little bit of last-minute shopping," she said. It wasn't the cold start to December that kept her from shopping. She said being busy with work and family delayed her gift-buying.

Checked off her list were a charm she purchased at and a few gift cards she was giving.

On Thursday, Carmin Awadzi, of Wheaton, was walking Jefferson Avenue with bags in tow. She was shopping for some holiday baking items and some gifts for herself, which she planned to buy at .

She did a lot of her shopping online this year and was avoiding the mall, she said. She was shopping in downtown Naperville because of the variety of stores available.

Awadzi said the best presents she found were the donut mixes she and her children would use to make donuts on Christmas morning.