The Christmas season brings out the best in many folks. Others, well, not so much.

On the Friday after Thanksgiving, shoppers at a Wal-Mart store in Valley Stream, N.Y. - some 2,000 strong, according to reports, lined up for the 5 a.m. opening - shattered the glass of the sliding double doors and trampled over the employees who had been trying to hold them back, killing one, 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour. Four others, including a 28-year-old pregnant woman, were injured badly enough to require hospital treatment.

The violence didn't even interrupt the shopping of some, whom witnesses described as "savages." Seriously, was the discount on whatever those folks intended to purchase really worth it? Let's hope it's worth a significant jail term for some. The news made Black Friday especially dark, even with retail sales up a reported 3 percent over a year ago as some 172 million Americans made their way to the nation's malls.

With America now officially in a recession - it started one year ago, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research - those numbers are a positive, so long as the spending and the behavior accompanying it remain within reason. If all you're doing is trading short-term gains for long-term losses - the very definition of this economic crisis - then what has really been accomplished?

Every year it seems something like this happens, and every year we write an editorial lamenting the commercialism that has come to replace the real reason for the Christmas season. Honestly, we don't really get the pre-dawn store openings, or the camping out on store sidewalks days in advance. It speaks to a certain cultural bankruptcy that is at the heart of the very real financial bankruptcies some are facing. From where we sit, not only should U.S. consumers rethink some of their priorities, but U.S. retailers ought to rethink some of the policies that encourage such behavior.

May this holiday season prove a safe and ultimately secure one for all.

Peoria Journal Star