Somehow This Doesn't Feel Right

Buy!

Buy!

Buy!

At any cost!

I did not go shopping yesterday. Black Friday does not entice me. In fact every year it becomes less of an enticement. Then I turn on the news and get downright turned off.

While I may never know the whole story, it can't be pretty. Not when a worker at a Wal-Mart in suburban New York City gets trampled to death just opening the doors for the crazed mob. Nothing in a Wal-Mart is worth anyone's life. Nothing in a Wal-Mart is worth that kind of crazed pushing, shoving, and unkind behavior. In fact I have a hunch that there is nothing in a Target or Macy's or Niemann-Marcus that would be worth that.

One person, according to news reports, said that the crowd was acting like "savages." When told they had to close the store shoppers got angry because they had been in line so long- and then they kept on shopping.

They kept on shopping.

(Sarcasm alert!) After all they were only doing their patriotic duty to get the economy moving again. They were spending money. Someone hurt? Someone killed? But they were in line for hours! You can't stop them from spending their money like that!

I get more and more worried that this economic crisis will produce more of this kind of insanity. And I don't just mean the rampaging, material-addicted crowd. I also mean the stores who have to get bigger and bigger profits at the expense of civility. I know that an economy needs people to buy things. Of course it does.But it gets out of hand.

Especially at the holiday season.

I hate to use the word "Christmas" to describe it. Because this is not Christmas. This is holiday frenzy. Celebrating the "son of man" who had nowhere to lay his head.

I repeat-

Somehow this just doesn't feel right.