season of goodwill

[realthog]

The BBC reports what has to be one of the most repulsive stories around at the moment. Here's the start of it:

US stores lure hard-up shoppers

US stores have opened early and offered steep discounts to encourage consumers to part with their cash as the Christmas shopping season kicks off.

Crowds of shoppers turned up at dawn to snare the best deals.

A worker died and at least three people were injured after being trampled by a crowd of shoppers at a Wal-Mart in the New York suburbs.

Season of greed, more like -- pure, unadulterated, and now murderous. And people ask me why I loathe Christmas so much . . .

Comments

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

It seems like this happens every year. Stupid, stupid people.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"It seems like this happens every year."

The poverty-wage employees being trampled to death?

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

People being trampled to death in black friday shopping. I have deep sympathies for it being a worker, this time, versus one of those hell-bent on shopping. And perhaps my memory is twisting things past to be darker than they were? I'd swear someone was trampled to death last year. Maybe not the year before?

[realthog.livejournal.com]

" have deep sympathies for it being a worker, this time, versus one of those hell-bent on shopping."

Yes, that does somehow add a whole extra layer of nausea to the tragedy, doesn't it?

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

It's programmed insanity. Not the only example of it either: http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS112587+13-Mar-2008+PRN20080313

I used to live round the corner from that annual event, typically described on Atlanta tv stations in ways that suggested it was cute.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

But have the brides trampled anyone to death?

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Not yet, but the person who opens the door has to get out of the way smartish. I find it a pretty disgusting custom, or, as my younger son might say, disturbing.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"I find it a pretty disgusting custom, or, as my younger son might say, disturbing."

My, but the young folk do euphemize, don't they, whereas we'd have been so much blunter in our youthful day. "Disturbing"? I think "pukeworthy", more like. And that's the mildest term that comes to mind.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

That seems about right.

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

Some of the West End stores opened at 7.30 this morning, for much the same reason, I guess. No casualties.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

It's not the sales I object to: it's the greed for BARGAINS!!! becoming so all-consuming that the possibility of trampling underfoot and killing a poverty-wage employee seems a trivial matter.

I mean, kind of, well, euggh! Who are these people?

[hutch0.livejournal.com]

True. When the new Ikea store opened in Edmonton a couple of years ago there was a riot. That's Edmonton a couple of miles along the North Circular from us. Not the Edmonton in Canada. Obviously.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Humans. Consult Thomas Hobbes.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

I tried, but he said he was dead.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Very troublesome that way those Sages of Malmesbury, being solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

"I loathe Christmas so much . . ."

Same page.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"Same page."

But, have you noticed, whenever we voice this opinion there's huge peer pressure to the effect that we're spoilsports, sourpusses, Scrooges, you name it.

But consider another example. I love snow -- I love its falling, I love going out and romping in it, I love throwing snowballs. Gimme a sledge and you're a friend for life. By contrast, Pam really dislikes snow.

I say that's fair enough: we're all different. Yet would all the folks who think you and I are grinches for loathing Christmas say the same about Pam's dislike of snow?

No, obviously: and neither should they. I defend to the death, etc., her right to have that extraordinarily irriational dislike. Yet Christmas seems to exert on all of us this curious emotional blackmail whereby we're somehow reprehensible if we think the whole repulsive quagmire is just plain disgusting. (You have no idea of the self-censorship that went into that last sentence.)

On a related subject, you might be amused by this: http://www.nypost.com/seven/11262008/news/politics/let_santa_light_the_menorah_140965.htm.

[quilterbear.livejournal.com]

But consider another example. I love snow -- I love its falling, I love going out and romping in it, I love throwing snowballs. Gimme a sledge and you're a friend for life.

Don't know about the SLEDGE part, but I, too, love snow -- I love it like a young child loves Christmas. Glad to know you are a fellow adorer!
Poor Pam, she just doesn't get it, does she? haha

And I so agree about the greed being so repulsive. My God, someone DIED because of it. Horrifying.

sorry for rambling!

[sarcobatus.livejournal.com]

It isn't Christmas itself that I despise, but the commercialism.

You're right, though; everyone thinks I'm a Scrooge about it.

"(You have no idea of the self-censorship that went into that last sentence.)"

I can imagine.

Unsurprising about the White House gaff.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

"Unsurprising about the White House gaff."

Too right. He's the man who put the "ass" in asshole".

[teacher-bear.livejournal.com]

That is just awful. I hate the greed stampedes. Never go myself. BTW, I thought that there weren't any WalMarts in NY. Obviously I got that wrong...

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

Again, it is inescapable how alienated I am from the 'culture' of the nation to which I belong. I cannot comprehend any of this.

But then, all over the internet people are describing their Thanksgiving as eating a 48,000 calorie meal and slumping in front of the television to watch football and / or fight with their relatives.

None of this applies to us. Thank goodness. Which has a great deal to do with WHY we live here.

Love, C.

[monissaw.livejournal.com]

You might appreciate this:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.humor.best-of-usenet/browse_thread/thread/89d4a24299f1eb48


I like the idea of Christmas (although I'd like it even more if it was in winter) but not the usual approach to it. So I try to do things that make it less commercial for me (I shop at the local businesses rather than the big boxes, buy cards from a charity shop or make them myself). Last year I managed to persuade my family to go to the city park for lunch instead of spending all morning making salads to eat at home. Of course, they still made up the bloody salads and brought them to the park. This year, we're talking of making something simple to take to the park and keeping the Big Meal for the evening.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

My daughter introduced us, as an alternative to the annual misery of shopping for awful garbage and receiving similarly ghastly stuff to add to the clutter in a home already overfilled with clutter, to the idea of "buying" from the various international charities things like the planting of some trees in a Third World country, or a stack of anti-typhus injections for kids, or work to protect an endangered species, or . . . Not only does this reduce the misery all round but it somehow seems a hell of a lot more Christmassy than the traditional mammonistic orgy.

Although some family members resist the notion, most are loving it.

[monissaw.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. I think they're a wonderful idea.

[tomaq.livejournal.com]

I think the guilt-driven waste that often seems to accompany Xmas is an unacknowledged part of the reason people get depressed. I think subconsciously a lot of us realize that our way of life is not (yeah, it's a cliche but get used to it) sustainable.

I rarely regret things I give, but some of the things I get just make me wonder what people are thinking. (Family secrets buried herein)

Fortunately, we in the U.S. just elected an Islamoterrorsocialist (and a EUROPEAN socialist at that), so all of this will change pretty soon.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Just saw this bit of news today. It is truly disgusting.