"These people are turning their living rooms into inventory centers, diving into Dumpsters for spare boxes, stuffing cars and closets with packing peanuts, checking for e-mail every free minute and racing to the post office nearly every afternoon. That's on top of the shopping, decorating, party planning and holiday stress that afflicts everyone else.

Asked how she was planning to spend the next few weeks, Sheryl Williams of Pillager, Minn., who sells porcelain figurines on eBay, replied, "In a panic." She said that if people were to walk by her house next week they would "see me with the door hanging open in the dead freezing cold, trying to get the packages out."