'Tis the Season - isn't it?

And so, sometime in the next day or so, the really serious business of Christmas Shopping begins.

I already hate the vacuous woman in the Lowe's ad - or is it Home Depot - who pantomimes the garland, and the dancing turkey, the giant inflatable snow globe, the ornament hooks.

I've already seen enough of the Christmas Tree Shoppe flyers for bundt cake pans shaped like gingerbread houses, for fake Byers' carolers, for snowmen plates.

I've already averted my eyes from the candy aisle at CVS, with the red and green M&M's, Hershey's Bars, Reese's Cups, York Peppermint Patties - and every other candy that now comes wrapped in festive foils. Must have. Must have. Must have. Didn't Christmas candy used to be candy canes, ribbon candy, chalky hard candies in little cardboard cartons, and a non-specialized box of Whitman Samplers?

I've already tuned out the oldies station that plays nothing but (mostly bad) Christmas music between Thanksgiving and Christmas. (I mean, I never get tired of the Beach Boys' Little Saint Nick - and who could? - but some of the dreck they play is the flip side of the flip side.)

I've already had it with "Every Kiss Begins with K". And all those car ads! Who gives someone a car for Christmas?

There's much that I love about the "Holiday Season."

Christmas trees. Christmas wreathes. Christmas music (other than the terrible stuff on that oldies station). Wrapping presents. Writing cards. "Quality time" with family and friends. Left over turkey. Red and green. Cornball reruns of White Christmas.

But the incessant, relentless consume-consume-consume drumbeat. The buy-buy-buy or you, personally, will be responsible for drop-kicking the country into a recession. The complete and overwhelming crapification of the world.

Bah humbug!

Sure makes me glad I'm not a consumer goods marketer. I'd sure as hell hate to have to play a part in all this.