Washington ? David Merlin-Jones stood in front of the gift card rack at a Safeway in Silver Spring, Md., Monday and just stared.

His wife had sent him there for groceries, but he soon realized that he could finish his Christmas shopping as well. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a wad of expired coupons and scraps of paper. Somewhere in there was his 10-year-old daughter’s wish list.

“This is, like, stocking stuffers,” said Merlin-Jones, who lives in Adelphi. “I’m looking to see if there’s any last-minute guilt gifts.”

It’s a stereotype with at least a grain of truth: Men procrastinate on holiday shopping. According to a survey released last week by the National Retail Federation, a retail trade group, and conducted by BigResearch, about 19 percent of men had not begun their holiday shopping, compared with 14 percent of women. Only about 11 percent of men claimed to be completely finished.

“It’s a fine art form we’ve perfected over the years,” said Scott Krugman, a spokesman for the National Retail Federation. “It’s never been easier to be a procrastinator.”

The popularity of gift cards and a full weekend before Christmas to find the perfect present provided even more excuses for holiday laggards this year.

Henry Wilson of Rockville, Md., perused Christmas cards at a CVS in Washington Monday. He had already visited a farmers’ market in Northeast Washington in the morning and planned to stop at a suburban mall for a digital camera for his daughter and black tennis shoes for his mother. If all went smoothly, he would find presents for the seven people on his list before his shift as a limo driver began at 2 p.m.

It’s not that he hadn’t thought about what to get everyone for Christmas, Wilson said. But the execution can be tricky.

“It just kind of caught me quick this time,” he said.

Although males lead the last-minute charge, they are not alone in putting off purchases. Overall, consumers have delayed their shopping trips this holiday, causing retailers anxiety over how the season will fare. The International Council of Shopping Centers reported that consumers had completed just 18 percent of their shopping as of early last week, down from 31 percent in 2004.

The group cited calendar quirks as the main reason for the tardiness. About 67 percent of those surveyed said they planned to take advantage of the weekend before Christmas. Sixty percent said this year’s early Thanksgiving made them feel they had more time to shop, even as time slowly ran out.

And about 52 percent of consumers in the ICSC survey said they felt comfortable waiting until the last minute because they can turn to gift cards. The NRF estimates sales of gift cards will grow 6 percent to $26.3 billion this holiday season. They are easily available, quick to pick up and no longer signal thoughtlessness.

In other words, gift cards are the salvation of desperate male shoppers.

“Most people are not panicked about it because frankly they know they’ve got the gift card in the back pocket – which really is a sentiment of a lot of guys,” said Marshal Cohen, an analyst with consumer research firm NPD Group, who estimated that 64 percent of gift card purchasers are men.