Mistletoe is a parasitic plant. It should come to no surprise to anyone taking note of the gradual evolution of the holiday season that Christmas is becoming a parasite, too. Rudolph’s namesake song is getting earlier airtime because American businesses look forward to this time of year more than Tiny Tim. Even with Ebenezer Scrooge’s philanthropy, Tiny Tim received an armful of Christmas toys. Retailers such as Wal-Mart and Target sell millions of toys to millions of Tiny Tims. Department stores and manufacturers reap Christmas gifts that would make Baby Jesus blush. What’s a paltry handful of gold, frankincense, and myrrh compared to a tsunami of money?

If you want to understand what Christmas represents today, don’t think of a wee infant in a manger; that’s yesterday’s passé Christmas. To comprehend today’s Christmas, think of Scrooge—no, not Ebenezer this time, but Uncle Scrooge, from the Disney cartoon Duck Tales. Scrooge had a fortune of gold coins that he used as a swimming pool. That’s what Christmas is today, and that’s why “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is playing on some radio stations weeks before the turkey is even on the table.

If you don’t buy my Christmastime conspiracy theory, just look at how eager retailers are to milk consumers on that other November holiday, Black Friday. Some stores begin their sales on Thanksgiving, while others open as early as 4 a.m. Christmas might still be about togetherness or the celebration of a certain religious figure in your household, but outside your happy home, Christmas is the celebration of the almighty dollar. Jesus has been replaced by America’s new saviors, Andrew Jackson and Benjamin Franklin, the dead presidents on the 20 and 100 dollar bills.

I have to back up a moment, before this starts looking like a religious tirade. Am I offended that the “Christ” is systematically being extracted from “Christmas?” Not quite. Y’see, I have no problem with people honoring their personal savior on December 25, but I’ve never been very merry about hearing them complain that everyone else isn’t doing the same. I still call Christmas by its Christian name, but what I celebrate is more akin to Xmas. I give and receive gifts and I eat until I’m sick, as is the custom. What I don’t do is pray, go to church service, or wear nifty religious sweaters. My problem, then, isn’t that Jesus is being extracted, but that J.C. is being replaced with paper likenesses of the founding fathers (many of whom were more or less atheists, as irony would have it).

Christmas, or my idea of it, has nothing to do with cash and little, if anything, to do with the man it was named after. Christmas is a holiday that forces even the most dysfunctional of families to feign happiness. Christmas is a day of familial bliss, even if that bliss is artificial. Your parents may hate each other, but on one day a year, dad hides the whiskey and mom pretends she isn’t seeing another man. I fear that all of the clever marketing and the early Christmas music is going to rob Dec. 25 of its real value. Baby Jesus and family togetherness alike may soon be altogether replaced by gift-giving, and that’s a very sad thought. Santa isn’t Jesus; Santa is a fat man who indulges himself with too many cookies and turns potentially good kids into materialistic product-mongers. At least Jesus taught peace, love, and understanding. I might not buy the Christian dogma, but even I’ll concede that the Christmas spirit was better off when it wasn’t founded on expired politicians and doorbuster sales.

All I want for Christmas is for “All I Want for Christmas Is You” to be an accurate depiction of the holiday season. It’s not about that hot new toy or Target’s fantastic Black Friday discount on seasons one and two of House (as great as that was). It’s about the people you care about smiling, or at least pretending to, while the lot of you crowd around a fire, dinner table, or tree and exchange gifts, hot cocoa, and bad jokes. And no matter how bad your jokes are, they’ll laugh, because that’s what Christmas is for.

Charles Smith is a native of Southwest Virginia whose heart was two sizes too small–until he began writing columns for the New River Voice. He still has garlic in his soul, though. There’s only so much we can do.