R.I.P. Jdimytai Damour

A man was STOMPED TO DEATH BY MAD SHOPPERS in a WalMart on Long Island in the early morning of the day after Thanksgiving.

I keep trying to write more about this, but each time I sit down at the keyboard to take another crack at it I just stare at the screen and shake my head; speechless in astonishment.

Right now I'm playing my own little collection of iTunes Christmas music, something I generally start as soon as Santa comes riding along Broadway at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Watching the parade is for me a sort of guilty pleasure every Thanksgiving. I love the hour of Broadway previews and dancing that takes place in Herald Square as the parade inches its way toward Macys. By the time the Rockettes literally kick off the parade presentation itself I am already a hopeless mark for the forthcoming orgy of marketing miasma, and I know it. Nonetheless I watch, I tear up at the programmed moments, and I grin stupidly at each hyper inflated balloon soaring above the street like the hopes of retailers everywhere.

I am a hopeless shill for the capitalist holiday season. I'm not really comfortable with that, but it happens... and it happens every year. Most of the time, the way I shop for Christmas is to look at things along the way and then go out in a last minute shopping frenzy that makes me feel like one of Santa's elves. It's a stupid personal tradition, but it's me.

This year I have seen a number of people, like my old friend Rev. Billy, call for not buying and for learning a new way of caring and festing, and I've listened, and at least partly agreed with, the desperate call for people to shop enthusiastically in order to bolster our stumbling economy. To me BOTH of these perspectives have validity.

At the same time, I absolutely agree with Rev. Billy when he declares that "you don't have to BUY a gift to GIVE a gift."

But this thing that happened on Friday... It's a whole different beast. People in a feeding frenzy at a "door buster sale" who literally busted the doors and trampled the man standing behind them. There are calls to stop such sales and there are attacks on WalMart (and heaven knows that I am no friend of WalMart) but to me, this isn't about stores, or sales, or shopping... it's about people and greed and an uncontrollable addiction to STUFF.

Something is desperately wrong in our brains when this kind of scene can be played out so easily and with so little astonishment.

I still haven't figured out how to respond to this, but I know that I, somehow, must respond.

What will YOU do? Give it some thought... Let me know.

In the meantime, from Bruce Cockburn's album "Life Short Call Now" here's a song for your Xmas Shopping Pleasure.