Halloween: All Bullshit's Eve
The last trick-or-treating doorbell is also the starting pistol for news stories about how early "the holidays" are beginning these days. Said stories correspond with advertisers' exhortations to get your shopping done early, and to decorate your home with things like cardboard maple leaves and shellacked ears of inedible corn.

Nov. 20: The Feast of the Weight-Loss Tips
This "feast" is actually celebrated throughout the year, but kicks into high gear a few days before Thanksgiving with advice on keeping off "those holiday pounds." Women's magazines run articles on how to replace something good with something less good (want marshmallows? try something that's not marshmallows!), while every other media outlet stuffs the eyes and ears with food porn. Celebrate this holiday with a traditional snack of rice cakes layered with pure suet.

Day After Thanksgiving: Black Friday
This day is most enthusiastically celebrated in the direct-marketing community. Members of this vibrant culture learn from their mothers and grandmothers how to mix up a delicious batch of junk mail, spiced with exclamation points and sweetened with love. These simple folk delight in sharing their sales, deals, and specials with you — like an iPhone app that tells "recessionistas" where to buy stuff. Today's direct marketers have improved on their ancient customs: holiday shopping isn't just about buying stuff anymore, it's about buying stuff that helps you buy more stuff.

Monday After Thanksgiving: Cyber Monday
Sadly, Cyber Monday is not the day for "cyber sex with a guy named eric" (except insofar as every day is). Rather, this celebration was launched in 2005 to commemorate the noble tradition of spending money without interacting with other people. The term Cyber Monday was coined by the National Retail Foundation, whose website CyberMonday.com advertises can't-miss deals like a "Free signature iPhone case with $250 Marc by Marc Jacobs purchase at Saks.com!" Apparently "It has been postulated that through mainstream media adoption of the term, combined with retailers hoping to drive more traffic to their sites, that the "Gimmick" of Cyber Monday could become a "Real Trend"." The foregoing is one of the most depressing sentences I have ever read on Wikipedia, and possibly anywhere.

Day After Cyber Monday: Downer Tuesday
This is the day when news outlets report the decline in holiday retail sales since the glory days of the debt bubble, and consumers feel bad for how little they bought. This holiday is a lot like Mardi Gras, and should be celebrated similarly — with unbridled consumption. Go buy a Zhu Zhu hamster — hell, buy ten. Hamsters eat their young, so you might need a couple extra.

Sometime Around December 5: St. Abstemius's Day
St. Abstemius was the patron saint of toothless cultural criticism, and his feast day is the time when newspaper commentators bemoan the overcommercialization of the holiday season. Traditionally, the oldest girl in the household spends this day making gifts for everyone else out of old wrapping paper, bottle caps, and her own hair. Then she sprinkles the family's shoes with a mixture of extra virgin olive oil and bile. Then everyone goes out and buys more stuff.

December 20: Panic Day
Those who celebrate Hanukkah will be all done as of this day (at least in 2009), but the fun is just beginning for Christians and other worshippers at the Church of Christmas Shit-Buying. Panic Day is marked by increasingly obtrusive warnings about the amount of time before Christmas, and by a corresponding decrease in the availability of anything anyone would actually want to buy. Celebrate this day by purchasing a talking bottle opener for someone you mildly dislike.

December 25: The Climax of Consumption
Americans open their gifts and, just as the prophets of advertising promised, they are completely, ecstatically happy.

December 26: Boxing Day
Return everything.

Cyber Monday [Wikipedia]

As times get tougher more desperate people are shoplifting for the first time. Richard Johnson from Indiana got laid off and attempted to steal a bottle of sleep medication but was caught and is now awaiting trial for misdemeanor theft charges. Johnson had never been arrested or shoplifted before and his desperate economic situation would make many people see his prosecution over a $4.99 bottle of sleeping pills as a little harsh. But retailers are also facing hard economic times and they are becoming more vulnerable to shoplifting:

“More people are desperate economically, retailers are operating with leaner staffs and police forces are cutting back or being told to deprioritize shoplifting calls,” said Paul Jones, the vice president of asset protection for the Retail Industry Leaders Association.

The problem, he said, could be particularly acute this December, “the month of the year when shoplifting always goes way up.”

Two of the largest retail associations say that more than 80 percent of their members are reporting sharp increases in shoplifting, according to surveys conducted in the last two months.

Compounding the problem, stores are more reluctant to stop suspicious customers because they fear scaring away much-needed business. And retailers are increasingly trying to save money by hiring seasonal workers who, security experts say, are themselves more likely to commit fraud or theft and are less practiced at catching shoplifters than full-time employees are.

Anyone who has ever worked retail knows that a certain amount of shoplifting is almost expected, and when an understaffed store is faced with an overwhelming amount of holiday shoppers, shoplifting increases dramatically. However, will prosecuting the shoplifters help curb what looks like an unstoppable cycle of theft? Probably not, otherwise more retailers would prosecute misdemeanor shoplifters (many shoplifters go unreported to police).

So then, should misdemeanor shoplifters with desperate situations be let off the hook, so to speak? Or should we always report shoplifters no matter what?

As Economy Dips. Arrests In Shoplifting Soar [NYT]