Yule log! Not that I have a log...in the way you think I meant it...

Here we are in the midst of the holiday season. The season of giving.When the air's filled with a little more love and brotherhood. Except of course at the mall on the day after Thanksgiving when the ravenous packs of glazed eyed bargain hunting shoppers attack the displays with their sharpened credit cards and reinforced shopping carts. Driving through the parking lot like Jeff Gordon so that they can get that great parking spot before you do! The same Playstation that has been on that shelf for the last year is now worth slashing the throat of the person in front of you to get at! Even the mall Santa looks a little worried as he sits paitienly waiting for the youngsters to reveal their Christmas wishes to him. "Did that mother have a sharpened candy cane in her purse? Why's this kid looking at me like I'm a giant turkey leg? Did he just pee on me?" Ah, Christmas! Whatever this season means to you, do you think that our ancestors had this in mind? "Let's create a holiday to celebrate a season of giving and thanks, but let's really make it an orgy of consumption!" Well...maybe the ancient Romans would've come up with that idea, but they probably would have tied sex into it more somehow. The herd of humanity that storm through the Best Buy's and Circuit City's grabbing that flat screen television as though it were the cure for cancer. You can almost hear them muttering, "must have this...must have this now..." as they paw through the aisles searching for that combination video game/food processor that they saw on 60 minutes that simply everyone's getting this year. If you feel this fever overtaking you this holiday season, just remember, on December 26, while you're taking all the boxes and wrappers to the dump, all sated on turkey and dressing, that the person you cut off in line to get that Disco Elmo, still lives in your town and you'll probably cross paths with them again at the returns counter while taking back the corduroy gaucho pants that your Aunt Eloise got you.