The Thanksgiving holiday came and went, trailing behind it the long Thanksgiving weekend and all the hallowed and colorful traditions we associate with this fine, quintessentially American festival

* The Thanksgiving holiday came and went, trailing behind it the long Thanksgiving weekend and all the hallowed and colorful traditions we associate with this fine, quintessentially American festival. There was, for instance, the tradition of shoppers being crushed, trampled, mangled, or otherwise violated in the rush to take advantage of post-Thanksgiving sales.

In Cascade, Mich., two shoppers--one a pregnant woman--were hospitalized after falling beneath a store-opening stampede; in Orlando, Fla., a man who jumped the line to get a $199 laptop computer was tackled and wrestled to the ground; in Beaumont, Tex., a mob of crazed bargain-seekers was maced by an off-duty policeman. Another longstanding tradition is the Thanksgiving zillion-dollar lawsuit, brought by the spectators traditionally concussed when one of the traditional giant balloons in New York City's traditional Macy's parade gets its guide ropes snagged on a street-lighting fixture and brings it down. This aspect of the festivities went somewhat awry this year, when the father of the concussed spectators (two sisters) declared, to howls of outrage from the local plaintiffs' bar, that Macy's could not fairly be held to blame and he would not sue. Some people just can't get into the holiday spirit.