Tylor Brand

This Friday before you begin your endless trek from the most distant parking space on the planet ÷ located somewhere in New Mexico ÷ to the consuming frenzy in your local mall, hang your head in shame and mourn our loss.

Gone are the days when the swankiest toy one could have as a child was a straight, relatively sturdy stick (pointed tip optional) which one could spend endless hours turning into anything one's twisted little four-year-old mind could comprehend, and then later use to whack one's four-year-old best friend behind his knee.

Yes, those were the halcyon days of consumerism. I remember when I could play with my actual store-bought toys (the Ghostbusters and innumerable plastic, scientifically inaccurate dinosaurs) in the giant mud wallow I had created in my back yard. (Ah, such is a joy that only comes when one is so coated in muck that he will be digging grit from his personal orifices for weeks). But with the over-electronic selection of late, many of the new favorites would be lucky to make it through Easter. And, while working, they must be kept in clean rooms with controlled humidity and played with using rubber gloves and tweezers. I'd have mirthfully destroyed them in seconds.

But those days are gone. This Friday has been termed by retailers "Black Friday," a term that means moving out of red ink to black, but that really sounds ironically like a combination of "Black Tuesday" ÷ the day the stock market (represented here by our wallets) crashed in 1929 and "Good Friday," the day on which we killed Christ. On it begins the "secular holiday spending and fleecing season," an all-encompassing term that should be used instead of the bland sounding "holiday season" that's being tossed around now.

So what does that mean for you, the loyal consumer? For one, if it becomes necessary to go anywhere, your shopping/eating/breathing experience will be set to a soundtrack of sappily saccharine "holiday" music, complete with a subliminal message that will set the herd to such a frenzy that normally civil, well behaved parents will resort to knife fights to see who gets the last "Chicken Dance Elmo" ÷ which will hopefully be as interesting as the "Tickle-Me Elmo" of years past, of which several dozen were reprogrammed by a disgruntled employee to spout vulgarity like members of Motley Crue in a VH-1 interview (Idea: keep the electronics for these and repackage them as Bobby Knight action figures for dad, complete with Kung Fu choke grip.).

Americans will be inundated by 10 billion festive catalogs ("Take that, Northwestern forests!") of which you will personally receive a mere 50,000. We will spend $800 billion on festive crap that will either be returned or neglected in weeks. We will go to the mall that has been decorated in a festively religion-neutral scheme of red and green and festively subject our screaming children to the underemployed sauced-up Mall Santa for the sake of a heartwarming picture of a tear-streaked child being physically restrained in a festive manner by a costumed man who hates his life. Ah, you can smell it in the air · Walgreen's-brand gin, that is!

Now Christmas isn't a bad time of the year ÷ unless you're a poor college student who's "too old for Christmas" but who'd love some money for rent, or at least, some leftovers ÷ it's just that it's probably the leading cause of suicide and heart disease behind Valentine's Day.

If you'd like to give someone a gift or many gifts (kids need a day of joy, and giving is nice), go for it! But if you can't distinctly remember what the person looks like or if said person is alive, then I'd settle for a decorative card ÷ preferably personally created ÷ maybe with an empty invitation to see you "anytime" (colloquial translation: anytime after death).

When the retail outlets consider a 3 percent increase in sales over last year a "slow season," this after a stock market crash following 9/11, we've got a major problem on our hands.

So instead of buying so many useless presents out of obligation this year, why not spend more time together as a family? Parents, drag your resentful teenagers out to somewhere with snow. Resentful teenagers, at least you can wander off and smoke while the little kids play, and you always have the option of giving dad a little gift to the back of his head in snowball form.

But be jolly ÷ no rocks.