Whether you’re ready or not, we have to do a Christmas thing today.

It is my mission today to defend all things traditional about the holiday season. I’ve had it up to here with the way some folks drag Christmastime down to the level of Midnight Madness Days at Highland.

Topic One: Slay bells ring, are you listening?

The bargain bins are full of Christmas albums by everyone from the Chipmunks to the Partridge Family. This is not good.

For instance, what’s this garbage about a Christmas album by the Beastie Boys? I thought I was pushing it in 1975 when lion tamer Gunter Gabel Williams and I tried to sell “Lions, Tigers and Teddy Bears: Christmas with Gunter and Dan.”

Who the heck told people like Anne Murray and the Carpenters they could sing “The Christmas Song”? When Nat King Cole sat down and let that tune flow from his velvet-smooth lungs, he closed the door on anyone ever doing that song justice again. Imagine Sinatra trying to sing “and folks dressed up like Es-kee-moes” and not sounding like a dork.

There are some songs you just have to hear to make the Christmas season complete, like Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad,” Springsteen’s “Santa Claus is Comin‘ to Town,” the Statler Brothers’ “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and Walter Cronkite’s “That’s Just the Way It Is, Dec. 25th.”

But when someone with the vocal range of a Jon Bon Jovi or a Bryan Adams tries to sing “Oh, Holy Night,” you can be pretty sure our capitalist system has given birth to some real ugliness.

Look—when someone like Larry Gatlin hits the high note on “oh night de-VINE,” you hear angels singing. But when someone like Sammy Hagar tries it, you hear sounds closer to a toilet backing up. And cash registers ringing.

Topic Two: Just hear that cash-box ring-a-ling.

Yes, it’s true—too many people use Christmas as an excuse to rake in the dough-re-mi. Don’t accuse me of doing it—the pay I’ll reap for this adventure might be enough to fetch me a Quarter Pounder and a twist cone.

Shortly after Abraham Lincoln and I sat down and established Thanksgiving as a national holiday, advertisers decided the Christmas shopping season should begin sometime around the Turkey Day weekend—like THREE MONTHS beforehand.

Along with this premature immaculation of the Christmas season exists the use and abuse of the Christmas spirit. How many times have you seen a car dealer hold a “95 Days ‘Til Christmas” sale? Or a liquor store having a “Make Sure Uncle Bob Has Enough to Get Bombed” sale?

Topic Three: Deck the Halls with Boughs of Plastic.

Let’s see a show of hands—who belongs to one of those beanheaded families that has an artificial Christmas tree? I should’ve known. There are more ‘burbanites running around this campus than you can shake a Sequoia at.

Yes, people—repent and buy a REAL tree this year! Imagine the fun you and your loved ones will have when, instead of saying, “Hey! Let’s stick the tree together tonight!”, you all pile in the car and go out in search of a real, once-live tree.

Think of the laughs you’ll share as you argue over such important points as needle size, height and number of bare spots. And the yelling that goes on when you try to talk the price down. And the adventure of stuffing the sucker in the trunk so it won’t bounce out and roll under a bus.

I am a man today because I go through this ritual every year.

Topic Four: On the First Day of Christmas, That Jimmy Stewart Movie Was Shown 400 Times.

You’ll have to spin into a ditch driving home and stay there til the Cubs’ Opener to miss seeing “It’s A Wonderful Life,” so don’t.

And so, I’m offering this simple phrase, from me to Jim Rosborough to the folks in the JLS: Peace on earth, good will to men. It’s Friday—let yourself be happy in three weeks.