In Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, we learn that for a few years now, Betsy, Tacy, and Tib have been going Christmas shopping together on the first day of Christmas vacation. Their shopping trips are loaded with traditions; chiefly, that while they visit many stores, they do not purchase anything until the very end. This year, they invite friend and occasional adversary Winona Root to join them, and they share and explain (and require compliance with) every tradition along the way. Winona is prominent in Downtown, inviting Betsy, Tacy, and Tib to the theater, joining them at a fancy party at Mrs. Poppy’s, and surreptitiously arranging to have one of Betsy’s poems published in her father’s newspaper.

The shopping expedition lays bare the girls’ vivid imaginations. They do not allow their meager funds (ten cents apiece) to constrain their fun, for until they arrive at the last store on their list, they do not shop to buy. They shop to shop! They approach this rather like “window shopping,” except that as they venture through Deep Valley’s bookstores, toy stores, and department stores, they examine and handle the merchandise that appeals to them. Tib even sits atop a seven-foot wooden horse. They then each select one item at each store– not to buy, but simply to select! Then they explain and defend their choice to the others, and have fun imagining its use.

With the advent of online shopping, or e-commerce, it is common and easy for an online shopper to click through many stores and items before choosing what will be purchased. The process can certainly take hours, as does the girls’ shopping trip. But generally, online shoppers shop to eventually BUY, and at a consistently increasing pace and volume. In 2025, online buyers spend an average of $5381 in the United States, while by 2026 that amount will likely rise to over $7000, and will surely continue to increase in the future. Even allowing for inflation (ten cents in 1907 would be worth about $3.42 in 2025), that’s a lot more spending than our four girls are prepared to do!

They do make a purchase at their final stop, though; a ten-cent Christmas ornament to adorn their respective trees, which will become a fine collection over the years as the tradition is faithfully repeated year to year. Nothing, Tacy explains, “is so much like Christmas as a Christmas-tree ornament,” while Tib adds, with her usual sensible perspective, “You get a lot for ten cents” (p. 126, Harper Trophy paperback edition, 1993). Given a multi-hour shopping trip, ice cream treats provided at the end of the day by their fathers, and the recommendations that some of the shop clerks will make to the girls’ parents when they embark on their Christmas shopping, that seems inarguable.

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For some e-commerce shopping statistics, see: https://www.yaguara.co/online-shopping-statistics/

An inflation calculator: https://www.in2013dollars.com/

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