The best thing about Christmas is being able to shop at midnight

Of all the things to love about Christmas – time with family, the challenge of glazing a ham against a steady stream of drinks, behaving like the living form of said ham in front of a festive spread – one of the less-obvious activities I enjoy at this time of year is the chance to shop until midnight.

It’s not exactly a source of personal pride to make a panicked run to a shopping centre on Christmas Eve, but for people who aren’t merely disorganised (busy parents, shift workers etc), it’s a necessary convenience.

I like it because it gives a sense of reaching a sort of shopping nirvana: when you really push into the late hours, it becomes a retail precinct with next to no people.

Being locked in an empty mall might be the only way I ever truly enjoy shopping. Credit: O.C. Fandom

For many individuals, myself included, crowded shopping centres are highly stressful environments, and the fewer the people during retail excursions, the better the outcome. It’s why that episode of The O.C. in which they all get locked in a mall overnight is one of my favourites.

Shopping crowds have become more manageable thanks to advancements in noise-cancelling technology, but even if you can tolerate the hordes, there are other good reasons to shop outside peak hours.

Juggling a 9-to-5 job with shopping is challenging and I, for one, would rather tack a shop onto the end of a workday than have it eat into my weekend downtime.

December 18 marks the first night that department stores, hardware stores and supermarkets across the state can open until midnight. So why don’t we do it year-round?

Extended retail hours are a sign of a city with an active night-time economy – something Brisbane is striving for. If you’re shopping later, you’re eating, drinking and catching public transport later, too.

BehaviourWorks Australia senior research fellow Jennifer Macklin says that’s where Brisbane would need to start if considering extended retail hours throughout the year.

“If you were taking a behavioural science approach to it, you’d first determine what the behaviours are that you actually want to see,” she explained.

Extended trading isn’t just about driving consumerism, but building a holistic economy that supports activity outside usual business hours. Credit: Jamila Toderas

“Is that encouraging people who are already in the city for work to stay after work to do shopping? Or are you talking about people coming into the city to shop in the evening?

“Then you would look at what is going to make it hard, or less likely, for people to actually do those behaviours.”

The most obvious barrier is transport: how people are going to drive or ride public transport home later in the night. But the reasons to go home after work are also compelling, so late-night businesses need to provide incentives to get people to change their behaviour.

Retail trading over Christmas does the latter well. You can dine later, get presents wrapped, bring the kids for a Santa photo, and free-up time during daylight hours for other preparations.

“Time-limited activities like night markets or pop-ups are a good way to get people into a new habit,” Macklin says.

“Something that signals to people that they really need to stay in the city on this night or this week so people actually go and try it out.”

Other simple incentives could include discounted parking, or dining and shopping deals.

Assuming it was legal to open late at night year-round, retailers would still need incentives to do so, such as support from local and state governments, and strong marketing.

“It’s hard for individual retailers to move if they’re not confident that everybody else is going to do it and it’s going to work,” Macklin says. “So just as important as encouraging consumers is to consider their needs, too.”

In the grand scheme of what the city needs, midnight shopping might be far down the list. But as I prepare to make a last-minute dash to purchase something before Christmas, I won’t just bask in the convenience, but the notion that this is how our night-time could feel beyond the festive season.

“What’s being offered after hours is not just selling more stuff, but an opportunity to think about how we might want to change and grow the local economy,” Macklin says.

“It’s an opportunity to add real value to people’s lives and create experiences.

“If you’ve got something like the Olympics coming up, it’s also the opportunity to get bigger players to sit down and be really strategic about what they want for Brisbane and people in the city.”

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