Happy Christmas

A few Christmas indulgences I'm enjoying this holiday season:

• Sleeping in, followed by lounging till noon
  
• Strong French press coffee with cream and sugar
• A steaming stack of pancakes swimming in a sea of syrup
• Mimosas
• Roughhousing with squealing children
  
• Second helpings at dinner
• Third helpings at dinner
• Apple pie for desert
  
• Second helpings at desert
• Thirds...
  
• Super secret family recipe "Spider Cookies"
• Copious amounts of red wine
• Egg Nog with spiced rum and nutmeg
  
• Watching "A Christmas Story" over and over and over again - interrupted occasionally by checking in on the Yule Log.

Happy Christmas!

"I have not been afraid of excess: excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit."
-W. Somerset Maugham

Black Friday

I don’t often comment on current events but I feel compelled to opine on the appalling and wasteful death which occurred at the Walmart store in Valley Stream, N.Y. last week.

I wish to extend my condolences to the family, friends, and loved ones of Jdimytai Damour. I am hopeful you find some solace knowing this terrible loss has brought the meaning of Christmas into sharp focus – regrettably by underscoring what the season is not.

Walmart is not to blame for this tragedy nor is the mall security, the police or the media. Every rabid consumer queued up at that Walmart is to blame for the death of Mr. Damour. If you were there and did nothing to quell that roiling crowd you are an accomplice to murder.

I have been in similar situations; masses jostling, pressing and fighting to gain entry. It is a dangerous scenario and one that prompts, nay, demands rational thought.

For those who made the choice to huddle outside the doors of that store on this truly Black Friday, rational thought failed. Instead, wild, ignorant, and destructive lust ran wild. And for what?

On November 28th a man was killed in a rush for cheap DVD’s and those who stormed the doors are culpable.

It is, I hope, the nadir of our shameful consumerism.

"I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed."
-Jonathan Swift