Yes, it's a festival of greed and competitive shopping in which shoppers act like ill behaved hockey and football players and compete in a no holds barred race to grab "limited quantity" items at loss leader prices. Last year at least one store employee was killed when he got trampled by a crowd. The whole thing is heavily promoted with advertising to hype the rubes up for the rip-off. If it were political it would be stopped for "inciting to riot" but since it's a promotion of capitalism it just gets worse every year. Christmas, it's such a Christian holiday of sharing and love. A fine example of the things that make me so embarrassed to have been born in the US.