NAMES in this story have been deleted to protect the seasonally challenged.
So don't bother sending copies of It's A Wonderful Life in the hopes of lighting that advent candle somewhere deep within my Grinchy soul. For some of us, it's just not The Most Wonderful Time of The Year.
True, you won't find many people actually admitting to that. Telling people you're just not that into Christmas is like telling them you hate Mom, apple pie and cute furry animals, perhaps ones with antlers rumoured to be pulling Santa's sleigh.
In my own defence, I'll mention that in its simpler, unsullied form, I actually enjoy many parts of Christmas. I like the sense of ritual and tradition. I like the turkey and the shortbread (the eggnog I could live without.) I love the lights strung from construction cranes and the masts of boats and the Christmas train in Stanley Park when it's full of excited little kids. I like the music too - as long as it's Bing, Elvis, Frank or the King's College Choir. Musak medlies, songs about shopping, or those featuring yodeling chipmunks don't count. And never, never play the Little Drummer Boy around me. Especially before December.
It's not the ideal of Christmas I don't like, but the strange bloated caricature it's become - a holiday akin to Elvis's Las Vegas years.
It's the heaps of obligation. The overblown expectations; a season that will magically transform your household into something out of Norman Rockwell while simultaneously saving the global economy from melting down.
It's the constant pressure to be cheerful.
It's the jam-packed mall parking lots where you might as well give up finding a spot to park unless you happen to be driving a tank.
It's the "holiday season" that now starts around Halloween, before the poor Legion volunteers have even got their poppies out.
It's the heaps and heaps of stuff.
Sure, I understand some of impulses behind the "stuff." In some families, Christmas Day is like an old-fashioned potlatch, where status grows in proportion to both the quantity and cost of the gifts given.
In others, nothing says, "Sorry I've ignored you the rest of the year" like a new Xbox or iPad.
In the interests of dignity, however, I think a basic rule should involve no gifts being larger than their intended recipient. For most of us, that will rule out the BMW. And possibly many of the larger flatscreen TVs.
While I'm on the topic, since when did any $100 electronic gadget start falling into the category of "stocking stuffer"?
Surely this title is meant to cover things like mandarin oranges and chocolates. Or silly items from the Dollar Store that cost about - a dollar.
Okay, I know what some of you are thinking. If you don't like the stuff, why don't you just make some heartfelt homemade gifts yourself? Seems to me, however, that people who think this way have a whole lot of time on their hands not experienced by 99 per cent of the population. Pulling out a glue gun at 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve is not my idea of a good time.
I'm all in favour of charitable donations as gifts. But realistically, that extremely slim note informing your loved ones about the goat they have purchased in Africa goes over better when there's something else shiny attached to it.
As I've learned, when it comes to the happy holiday season, resistance is futile. This WILL be the most wonderful time you've had all year, fuelled by steaming credit cards, enforced bonhomie and bad renditions of Good King Wenceslas - whether you like it or not.
Anything less, and it just wouldn't be Christmas.
