James said the following in an interview, which seems to explain the first verse:
"That song was about a time when we were very poor, and our old drummer and myself would go into various department stores and steal things and give them to people kind of in a Robin Hood way, give them to people including ourselves, because we didn't have any money and we thought it was O.K. to steal VCR's and stuff from department stores. We thought we were being vigilantes for justice. We would take a VCR and a couple Walkmans and batteries and stuff, and put them on the bottom of the cart and then put a big bag of dog food on top of them all and then have the cashier woman scan the dog food and usually they wouldn't see all the stuff, hundreds of dollars of electronics. But that's why the song kind of references being a criminal that doesn't break the law at Christmas time."
James said the following in an interview, which seems to explain the first verse: "That song was about a time when we were very poor, and our old drummer and myself would go into various department stores and steal things and give them to people kind of in a Robin Hood way, give them to people including ourselves, because we didn't have any money and we thought it was O.K. to steal VCR's and stuff from department stores. We thought we were being vigilantes for justice. We would take a VCR and a couple Walkmans and batteries and stuff, and put them on the bottom of the cart and then put a big bag of dog food on top of them all and then have the cashier woman scan the dog food and usually they wouldn't see all the stuff, hundreds of dollars of electronics. But that's why the song kind of references being a criminal that doesn't break the law at Christmas time."