Is there anything in any store worth dying for - worth killing for? People across the nation Thursday were injured in fights and fracases over items discounted heavily to draw shoppers to post-Thanksgiving sales. Sadly, that happens almost every year as shoppers scrap over goods on sale and "must have" items for their children or themselves. But the death of a 34-year-old temporary Wal-Mart employee in a Long Island shopping mall is different. It horrifies.

Jdimytai Damour was part of a small team of Wal-Mart employees who were trying to hold back a crowd of 2,000 frantic shoppers, including many who spent all night waiting for the store to open. Eventually, the crowd surged forward, pushed in the store's glass doors and trampled employees and fellow shoppers in a stampede to grab sale items. Eyewitnesses described people acting "like animals" as they stepped on and over the prostrate Damour while he struggled to breathe. Many in the crowd argued and kept shopping when the police and store employees told them that an employee had been killed and the store was being closed.

Most deaths by trampling occur during religious pilgrimages, sporting events where crazed crowds run amok, and when crowds are fleeing a fire. Damour's trampling was perhaps the first caused by Christmas shopping greed. Blame, of course, lies foremost with the people who were willing to trade their humanity for the chance to get a high-definition TV or some other item for a relative song. But those who say the tragedy was predictable are right.

Wal-Mart, despite its protestations to the contrary, deserves a large measure of the blame. The store had too small a security staff, reportedly issued no all for help despite the enormous crowd, and made no attempt to get the shoppers to enter in supervised lines rather than as a mob. But it wasn't just Wal-Mart where such scenes played out. The local police had trouble responding to the unfolding nightmare at Wal-Mart because they had been called to three other big-box stores where large crowds had begun to get unruly.

Many retailers plot to make shoppers frantic for a bargain by offering a limited number of grossly-discounted loss leaders that draw crowds. They deliberately instill the sense of dire shortage that occurs during famines. But famines are life-or-death situations. Christmas shopping is not.

If America still had poorhouses, many Americans would have shopped themselves into one. In 2007, consumer spending, much of it paid for with home equity loans taken out against property that was declining in value, rose to 72 percent of gross domestic product. That's a record unprecedented in modern history, Steven Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, said in The New York Times. The nation's average personal savings rate last January was minus 0.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Despite signs of an impending recession, consumers spent more than they earned.

The poor economy has made people even more desperate to get a bargain. But this Christmas, wise consumers will not drive themselves mad trying to meet past standards but adopt newer, saner ones. He who dies with the most stuff really doesn't win.

Among the many hopes we harbor this Christmas is that Jdimytai Damour's death will mark the death of America's consume-and-costs-be-damned culture. Children won't be scarred by not finding that perfect toy under the tree, but they will be by the sight of a parent willing to act like an animal to get it for them.