Holiday Shopping Frenzy Hits Its Peak

Black Friday marked the official start of the holiday shopping season, which for many of us, means a little extra stress, agitation and anticipation.

For a few unlucky shoppers, the season took a sharper turn for the worse. In a well-publicized incident, an employee at a Long Island Wal-Mart was trampled to death by surging crowds of scrambling shoppers.

It's another case of holiday shopping gone wrong and the line of head-shaking, tsk-tsk'ing media pundits is not short.

Of course, there are many of places to point the blame: at the media for spurring on the consumerist desires of the common shopper, at the shoppers themselves for letting loose their blood-thirsty ambition to save a few bucks, or at the retailers for fostering a culture of gung-ho, take-no-prisoners foraging for deals.

But instead of placing blame, it is time to take preventive measures to averting tragedies like this in the future. Security and police forces across the country were bulked up in anticipation for the surge on Black Friday, which is a start. But a little crowd control needs to be exercised if stores want to keep these types of incidents from happening again.

Consumerism is not likely to change any time soon, so in the meantime, to paraphrase a classic line, the best offense would be a good defense. Stores need to take the responsibility on themselves of ensuring that the proper procedures are put into place to make sure no one gets trampled at the store so some shopper can save a few bucks on tube socks.