Seriously.

Christmas is here in just a few days, and since I have gifts to wrap, let me get my “message” out of the way. As Jack Johnson sings on the “Curious George” soundtrack, “you gotta reduce, reuse, recycle.” I’ve only ever heard this CD at my dentist’s-she offers you headphones and a menu of music to drown out the sounds of gouging and screaming. Now I associate the Three Rs with holes being bored in my face.

Still, my message is this: if you’ve got to wrap presents, recycle the paper or, better yet, reuse it next year. Grandma won’t say “Rudolph-how 2005,” dismissing your thoughtful gift card to Menard’s just based on the wrapping paper. Given the way she hits the eggnog, odds are good Grandma won’t remember much from last year.

Even better, why not take this opportunity to reduce? Try this: don’t wrap anything. (I’m horrible at it, anyway-my presents look as if seals with oversized mittens attempted origami.) If your gift isn’t good enough to give someone without you hiding it under paper, don’t give it. You should be able to look Grandma in the eye as you exchange unwrapped gift cards, acknowledging that neither of you cares to send the very best.

But this isn’t what I want to talk about. What I want to do is mock the annual squabbling over the word “Christmas.”

In one corner, you’ve got Old Navy commercials talking about waking up on “Holiday Morning,” as if holidays were abstract and interchangeable, as if we lived in some Terry Gilliam-ian dystopia run by an old lady in oversized glasses (RIP, Carrie Donovan), with her yappy dog. Maybe somewhere, in some lab, some automaton programmed to purchase gift cards arises on Holiday Morning and gives Affection to Parent and Sibling and, after ingesting Early Nutriment, regards under Holiday Decoration to discern what Holiday Provider has purchased. But no one on the planet celebrates “Holiday.”

In the other corner, you’ve got Old Navy boycotters, who refuse to shop anywhere that doesn’t “keep Christ in Christmas.” Say “Happy Holidays” to these folks and they’ll bite off your face (without even Jack Johnson to drown your own screams). What they want, presumably, is to buy gift cards only from vendors who say “Merry Christmas” and stores with manger scenes designed to sell more gift cards. What they want is the veneer of Christianity all shiny and pretty over something that, once you scratch the surface, reveals itself as 99.44% commercialism. A more accurate slogan for these folks would be “keep Christ in commerce.”

Like it or not, Old Navy, millions worldwide celebrate Christmas. If you want to preach inclusion and tolerance-and these are essential values for our world-then don’t say “Holiday” in the abstract. Say “Diwali” and “Eid ul-Adha” and “Hanukkah.” Trouble yourself to pronounce them correctly. Say “Christmas.” Say “Tenno tanjobi.” Why should you be offended if I, as a Christian, wish you “Merry Christmas”? It doesn’t make me Torquemada. Or Pat Robertson.

And as for you, über-pious Christians: this winter holiday season, like it or not, is about solstice, pagan trees and garlands, Charlie Brown music, the Bowl Championship Series, bayberry candles, and Yule and consumption and Rudolph and snow, as well as Bethlehem and Mary and Luke. It always has been. Love this blur we’re in, shop for Grandma’s gift cards and nog, and whistle whatever cheery songs you will. Better yet, stop expecting a secular economy to bow to piety. (Do you really want Christ in commerce?) Keep Christ in Christmas, more power to you. But don’t expect the culture to step in time, least of all some old lady in oversized glasses, with a yappy dog. She wants us hip-deep in gift cards.