Half Over?

So the grotesquery of Thanksgiving is over for one more year, finishing, as usual, in the annual, celebratory storming of the shopping malls. According to the news on CNN yesterday (as I was pounding out those treadmill miles), some people start lining up at midnight to get the "early bird" specials. This is probably the only time of year when younger people thus get their wings. It's true, too, what they say about Black Friday. The whole thing is such a mystery to me. I worked in an electronics/music store one year, and we opened two hours early at 6 AM, but people really were lined up in the parking lot. I had to walk by their huddled, frenzied forms to get into the store to open my department. Then when we actually did open, they ran. It was remarkable. I've never seen anything like it before or since. We're talking people who don't even usually break a slow amble running. To the best of my knowledge, we weren't offering any special sales. Apparently, though, yesterday is no longer the biggest shopping day of the year. That title has been transferred to the last weekened before Christmas. I guess people are more reluctant to be early birds.
Anyway, though, VERY glad it's over. Christmas is going to be absolutely wretched, and I'm already trying to come up with some coping strategies. Staying busy is key, of course, but how does a well-intentioned holiday curmudgeon pull that off when bloody nothing is open? You have to plan ahead, I suppose. Get food, shop for movies, go to the library, etc. Hopefully I'll be exceptionally good this year and even get some work done on that most overdetermined of all holidays. I need a little bit of the anarchist spirit. Maybe I could dress up and run all over town turning over trash cans or something like that. We'll have to see what the weather's like.