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Holiday Season Beaten to Death

It finally happened. The spirit of giving and wonder which is supposed to accompany the “Holiday” season has finally given way to the actual seasonal sentiment of unrequited greed. A worker at a Wal-Mart was trampled to death by consumers who wanted to bum rush a store for toy greed, and two people were shot at a Toys-R-Us.

Look, this isn’t my holiday. I didn’t tell everyone to gussy up a bunch of chopped down trees, hang dangerous glass bulbs on them and blow money you probably don’t have on gifts that people probably don’t need. But if you’re going to promote a “holiday season”, you might want to consider actually living up to it. Try donating that toy money to a soup kitchen or relief fund of some sort. Volunteer somewhere, try actually making a difference in someone else’s life for a chance. That’s about the closest you’ll get to that vaunted “Christmas Spirit”. Gifts are cool and all that, but you can probably do more to show that this whole thing isn’t a bunch of co-opted pagan ritual hot air. The Golden Rule is *not* “he who has the gold makes the rules”, after all.