I can't help but compare this year's Christmas shopping season to last year's. Last year, you were a total dork if you didn't do at least some of your shopping online. Smug TV commercials showed Sally Smart buying age-appropriate and hard-to-find toys from eToys with a few simple clicks, while Fiona Foolish pressed through the throng only to find that the last plastic Japanese must-have was gone. Sally's children consequently loved her more, while Fiona's were surly and grew up to be thugs. Online shopping was the way of the future, and it was predicted at the time that this year, everyone would be doing it.

But the shops are as packed as always, and online retail stores (e-tail stores) are struggling. Is online shopping still the consumer experience of the future? Then why are we resisting it?

There are a few reasons: Last year, a few companies who got slammed by online orders were unable to meet demands for shipping, and consequently customers were still empty-handed on Christmas morning. Amazon.com was an offender. So was eToys. (How smug are you now Sally?) Shoppers who got burned this year may not like the crowds and the terrible parking any more, but they know that at least they will return home with the actual gifts in their actual hands.

Last year I was handed free wrapping paper on a street corner. Printed very subtly on the reverse side was the name of an online store, along with the oh-so-clever tagline, wrap up your holiday shopping. I recently found a few sheets of it stuck in a drawer during a rigorous cleaning of my apartment, and curiosity drove me to my laptop to see if they were still in business. Nope. Just another company that burned through their funding with cute gimmicks and not enough solid marketing strategy.

There are certain things that I buy online: books, CDs. Um, I guess that's about it. I am never going to buy clothes online. How do I know what they will look like on me? I don't care how they look on the 3D model that I can see from every angle with the aid of a Flash plugin. I don't think I will ever buy hair care products or cosmetics online, simply because I have too much fun standing in front of rows of products at the pharmacy, smelling one, surreptitiously trying another.

I'm not the only one who feels this way. Boo.com thought people would flock to its snazzy site for clothes and sporting goods. Eve.com, a cosmetics site, made the user experience as pleasant and gorgeous as possible. Both are now gravestones littering the Web landscape.

So this year, I think we'll see fewer ads claiming that you're MAD if you don't shop online for all your Christmas gifts, and certainly fewer cute giveaways by dot coms. (Most of them have learned the lesson that money must be spent more wisely.)

I will be shopping with the throng, right up until the last minute probably. It will be crowded. There will certainly be no parking in downtown San Francisco. I will be paranoid about pickpockets. But if it all gets too much, I will stop in to a little bar and have an Irish coffee, or a snifter of cognac. Then I will continue, pushing bravely through the masses, to the strains of NSYNC's version of "The Little Drummer Boy".