I’ve been wading through data on productivity, debt and income disparity for the past few days trying to figure out if the US qualifies yet as an undeveloping nation—a sort of first-world-to-third-world freefaller. I lost my concentration, however, when the shopping season suddenly started early and with a vengeance. Thanksgiving, it seems, is now simply the day before Black Friday. It’s a holiday where we pig out and eat like there’s no tomorrow—because tomorrow we won’t have time to eat, and the day after we won’t have money to eat. It’s a day to study hundreds of pages of newspaper ads and carefully map out shopping strategies. Eventually there’s Christmas, which marks the end of the Black Friday season and the commencement of After Christmas sales. If we make it to the end of the year we reward ourselves with a drunken night of debauchery. Ain’t the holidays grand? For a smug, condescending columnist, this season is replete with stories that beg to be written.