Bargains not worth cost of life

It is hard to make any sense of what happened in Nassau County, N.Y., when a Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death by a crowd of shoppers, but it gives new meaning to the term Black Friday.

Jdimytai Damour was working as a maintenance man for the holidays. He was trying to hold back a crush of shoppers who were pressing against the store's sliding glass doors just before its 5 a.m. opening. Some people had been waiting for hours to get good deals on flat-panel television sets and other electronics.

When the stampede started, other Wal-Mart employees and some shoppers apparently tried to come to Damour's aid, but other shoppers went rampaging by. In addition to Damour, at least four people were injured, including a woman who was eight months pregnant.

People who study crowd behavior say that individual identity and judgment can get lost when a group turns into a mob, and there are many terrible examples of that throughout history.

Others point to the economic downturn and suggest that people this year are even more driven than usual to find bargains. Early calculations indicate that store sales are actually up 3 percent as the holiday season gets under way, perhaps a sign that shoppers are out bargain-hunting.

And it's also tempting to say that things like that may happen in New York, but it wouldn't happen here. Probably not. Even though people were lined up outside of many stores in Tuscaloosa when they opened on Friday after Thanksgiving, they were not gathered in the thousands, pounding on windows. Orderly lines stretched down the sidewalks.

Still, if there are any lessons to be drawn from the tragedy in New York, it is an opportunity for us all to pause to think about the meaning of the Christmas season. The stress of making Christmas into something it isn't can undermine values and judgment.

And that can happen here — if we allow it.