(“Deck them all and grab their holly”)

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Black Friday 2013. It was historic. America retail outlets set several new “day after Thanksgiving” records … total shoppers, items sold, firearms discharged.

By the time the stores finally closed on Black Friday – if they actually closed at all – cost-savvy American shoppers had spent over $12 billion, on all the traditional holiday items: toys and dolls, deeply-discounted flat-screen TVs, and personal injury lawyers.

By now, thanks to smartphone cameras and in-store security systems, I’m sure you’ve seen some of the seasonal good cheer, festive fisticuffs, and bared-fang greed on display during Black Friday. People clawing over other people, neighbors shoving neighbors to the floor, face-offs between frighteningly plus-sized women armed with handbags the size of airplane hangars.

At one Walmart, shoppers were acting less like shoppers and more people during the 1975 evacuation of Saigon, except the people in Saigon were better behaved.

And better dressed.

Watching some of the videos, it was hard to believe that these were really just stores – the same stores that were there yesterday, and would be here tomorrow. This wild-eyed hysteria could’ve easily been mistaken for a scene from the 70’s, those few seconds after the arena doors are unlocked at a rock concert, but instead of a shrieking torrent of underfed coeds in bell-bottoms, it was everybody’s Mother.

But this year, things went beyond the normal, jolly, holiday trampling and the joyous seasonal eye-gouging. This year, the biggest Black Friday decision at some big box stores was if the Salvation Army should set up their collection kettles inside or outside the yellow-taped ‘crime scene’ cordons.

At a store in Philly, a woman got in a fight with another shopper over an item they both wanted. Badly. So, channeling the giving spirit of Saint Nicholas, she zapped the other shopper with a stun gun.

“Oh, you better watch out…”

Somewhere in Virginia, a fight broke out between two guys over a parking space. One of the men graciously surrendered the spot, though, after the other guy stabbed him.

“You better not cry…”

During one live in-store segment from Toys ‘R’ Us in Times Square, the reporter actually said, out loud, that there was no violence at this time.

“You better not pout, or I’ll punch out your eye…”

Some of the insanity can be attributed to businesses beginning Black Friday a bit earlier than usual…like, say, March. As each chain store jockeyed to out-early everybody else, crowds were teased to get start shopping earlier and earlier: at dawn Friday; then at midnight Thursday; then at 9pm … 6pm … 4pm … 10am … August … last year … in utero. I’m surprised stores didn’t install warming trays in their shopping carts, so shoppers could simply bring their Thanksgiving dinner with them and eat it while walking the crowded aisles.

And the crowds came. By the time Macy’s in New York City opened its doors at 8pm on Thanksgiving Day, there were 15,000 people clustered outside waiting to get inside. Fifteen thousand people. Why, that’s 14,994 more people than were able to use Obama’s HealthScare.gov website on the day it almost nearly sort of started partly working.

(Actually, we don’t know if Obama voters drove out and bought things, or if they just sat home waiting for people to bring them stuff.)

Nor did Black Friday end on Black Friday. Witness:

Hurry! Black Friday Savings End Sunday!

VISA did its part to helped spur the spending spirit by issuing a trendy new Black Card, the ultimate “look at me” status symbol, a card with a yearly fee of $500 and who knows what credit limit…if any. This kind of showy desperation is the fuel that feeds Jaguar dealerships everywhere; it’s what talk show hosts call a “middle-age crisis” or, as psychologists would put it, “compensation.”

Despite the Black Wednesday-Thru-Sunday Friday frenzy, though, stock prices for the big box stores took a bit of a hit in November, dropping overall by 2%. Analysts quickly pointed out all the seasonal costs of cleaning up blood stains and patching up bullet holes.

By the way, when it’s time to mail those Christmas cards, you’ll be happy to hear that we have a new batch of holiday stamps from the US Post Office, that paragon of taut fiscal efficiency. This year, they’ve released these religiously-respectful favorites:

• a menorah stamp, for those celebrating Hanukkah
• a kinara stamp, for those celebrating Kwanzaa
• a gingerbread house stamp, for those celebrating, uh, processed sugar

But now I need to run. I have to gird up for Cyber Warfare Monday, which started last Saturday. In the spirit of the season, I’ll leave you with this touching anecdote:

Thanksgiving evening, one family I know decided to take advantage of the special deals being advertised for Black It Ain’t Even Friday Yet Friday, and so at 9pm they bundled up and headed out. At their first stop, a cavernous clothing outlet named Old Grizzled Navy Guy, in-store crowds had already pegged the local fire department’s occupancy limits, so bitter, frigid store clerks had to stand outside with bitter, frigid discount-hunter-gatherers, letting the savages in only as sated shoppers exited.

This thing had “Lord of the Flies” written all over it…

My friend and his wife decided to divide and conquer; their thinking, apparently, being that if they hit two stores at once, they could experience much more suffering. He left his wife to stick it out at the Navy place, while he went next door to Home Target Depot Lobby Mart, a store so large that even Bruce Willis couldn’t blow it up.

Of course, the crowds were just as gigantic at Home Target Depot Lobby Mart. And just as polite, too, in a flesh-eating pre-civilization kind of way.

Anyway, nearly two hours later my friend hooked back up with his wife, who was still numbly waiting outside Old Grizzled Navy Guy. My friend made an ill-advised joke, ducked judiciously, and then spelled his wife in the grumbling line, so she could go buy a divorce.

And that’s how I got to hear the story. I had to go pick him up at the Navy Guy store.

See, in the settlement, she got the car.