Can we catch a break from Christmas already?

The Halloween decorations were barely down this year before the red and green lights of the Yuletide season were flashing.

The Muzak switched from “The Monster Mash” to “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” in record time.

Thanksgiving is far too pure to be a big commercial success for anyone outside of the grocery store.

When was the last time you saw a special Thanksgiving program besides the boring parades which are more about “pre-Christmas” than they are about giving thanks?

Time was you had to do all your shopping for Thanksgiving before the big day because stores would be closed.

Now, many stores use Thanksgiving as an excuse to kick off the Christmas shopping season.

The saddest part is that it works.

People will flood the stores for a Thanksgiving Day sale just to beat the “traditional” Day After Thanksgiving rush.

Many will lament the commercialism of the holidays and rightly so.

Every year it gets worse, and just when you think things can’t get any more ludicrous, some mega-mart, corporate bottom feeder goes and declares the X-mas shopping season to begin a fortnight before last year.

Well, enough is enough, shop-a-holics.

Make this the year to scale back. CDs, videotapes, leather jackets, salad shooters; you don’t need all that garbage anyway.

Give the gift that keeps on giving: Cash.

Tell mom and dad how much you really care about them.

Don’t send the woman who spent 23 hours giving birth to you out in the unforgiving winter chill just to buy you a new Walkman.

She’s going to get the wrong one anyway. Get the cash.

Don’t make the man who taught you to ride a bike and fight dirty shop.

Your dad hates shopping and WANTS to give you a big wad of cash. He only needs your loving approval. Give it.

Love doesn’t come in the form of coarse material possessions. It is as intangible as the mystery of what you will buy with your holiday cash before you buy it.

The only way to stop the constant encroachment of Christmas further and further back every year is tell the Man we won’t be a party to his vulgarly bastardizing our holiday for his own financial gain. This is not “Brave New World.”

The only alternative is to wait until the Christmas shopping season laps itself and we find ourselves shopping for next year’s Christmas two weeks before this Christmas has come to pass.