It’s mid-November. You know what that means: Christmas time.

Due to the efforts of the retail industry, the holiday season began the week before Halloween, which means that it’s time for everything to become dominated by all that ho ho ho garbage. I mean everything: advertising, Diet Coke, television and my thoughts.

However, it’s more accurate to say that the holiday season is incubating right now and will hatch around Black Friday. On Target’s website, for example, a cartoon Santa Claus is discretely hiding behind the navigation bar, waiting for his chance to leap out and ruin my Thanksgiving.

Black Friday definitely has assisted in making the holiday season begin even earlier. As stores like Target and Walmart are opening at midnight on Friday, Kmart is outdoing them by being open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving. At the rate things are going, I’m willing to bet that by 2025 stores will be opening at midnight on Halloween with great deals for Christmas.

Besides the Trample-a-thon known as Black Friday, another aspect of the holiday season that annoys me is definitely the slew of Christmas specials and advertising that carpet bomb the networks.

These things are the worst. Many of them are about people overcoming tough times to discover that “The True Meaning of Christmas” isn’t about greed or obtaining mass amounts of wealth, but instead is about family and love.

Now don’t get me wrong: I feel like these qualities are good, and they really should be encouraged. There are just a few problems with this.

For one, these specials go about encouraging such good qualities the same way Bono does: by beating me over the head with such messages until I get turned off and eventually find them extremely annoying.

The other thing is that society doesn’t even embrace these messages. That people are more important than things is a good message to share, but for the other 10 months of the year, we flagrantly violate this maxim and act like we’re allergic to broke.

Speaking of broke, this is the worst time of the year to be. Even though our culture emphasizes “The True Meaning of Christmas” as not being about greed or wealth, I still feel like I’m expected to get my friends nice things.

Ay, here’s the rub: I’m broke.

Even though I have some friends who I can negotiate non-present purchasing contracts with, there are some people who just deserve a present. I know homemade gifts are the best, but sadly I lack any sort of crafting prowess. This, of course, leads to a situation in which I either have to borrow money to save face or look like a horrible person.

It’s even worse when a friend buys a present and I have completely neglected to reciprocate. This happened last year and it only succeeds in making me feel like the worst person in the world. Who says the holidays are not about presents?

There’s just so much wrong with the holiday season. It begins too early, the sentiments are obnoxious, and in practice nobody even takes the morals to heart.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go. I have to start preparing for next Christmas.