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

[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.