Xmas today is a feverish, mindless and unregenerate overspending orgy. It is the Great Guilt Trip, the "buy a little something for everyone you love" disease that corporate America has infected our lives with, via the Trojan horse of a "religious holiday." To personify and encourage this lemming-like leap into massive consumer debt, we have our charming, portly mascot St. Nick, who, I discovered after perusing Alban Butler's indispensable classic "Lives of the Saints," has a biography that has suffered horribly from bastardization. St. Nicholas of Myra was a pious young man in fourth century Asia Minor who came into money following the death of his well-off parents. Upon hearing of a local man who had plans to sell his three daughters into prostitution, Nicholas threw a small sack of money through the man's window, providing the oldest girl with a dowry and thus enabling her to marry. As the other two girls came of age, he did the same charitable act to offset their future whoredom. As a result, St. Nicholas was represented in visual folklore as someone who tossed small sacks around.

Due to the crude artistic renderings of these sacks, many early Christians mistook the sacks for children's heads, giving rise to the rumor that Saint Nick had rescued and revived three children who had been slain by an evil innkeeper and subsequently pickled in a brine tub. Thus, St. Nicholas became the patron saint of children.

The true legend of Saint Nicholas is a damned far cry from his being a fat, bearded yutz from the North Pole who slides down the chimney and brings Barbies and Hot Wheels to all the children of the world. If you're considering selling your children into prostitution, perhaps you'll get a visit from St. Nick, but taken into actual historical context, the whole charade of letting one's children climb into a tarted-up drunk's lap at Macy's to bark out their greedy consumer object-lust is bogus and unwarranted, and the chilling result of corporate brainwashing.

There are positive aspects of Xmas that people tend to dwell on when struggling to achieve the holiday spirit. Xmas is the only time of year when senior citizens get dragged out of whatever urine cave they are inhabiting and are allowed to mingle with the general population. There are lots of parties, which enable lonely single people to raid their friends' medicine cabinets for Vicodin.

And there is that moment sometimes, when a transcendent hush falls over the dark street, and there is some unnameable thrill in the icy air, a collective human exuberance, and one looks at the tiny blinking stars though the spidery fingers of naked trees and feels full of a weird and wild hope.

But I usually miss that moment, because I'm pouring boiling water all over some child's snowman. Ho ho ho!!! And here's a variety of other holiday-type pranks to use as an antidote (or an additive) for your Yuletide misanthropy:

Build a panhandling snowman: Make a sad, one-armed snowman sitting on the sidewalk, wearing old, grimy clothes. Then put a crudely written cardboard sign next to it that says, "I am a 56 year old Vietnam veterin [sic] with Hepotitis D Please help." Make sure you put out an old hat, and come by every half-hour or so to collect the money for your very own Christmas smack fund.

Hang an apartheid wreath: Burn a radial tire and put a metallic bow on it, then hang it on your front door: "In Remembrance of those brutally murdered under Apartheid." Way to bum out the neighbors and win points for PC sensitivity, too! Plus, the carcinogenic aroma of burning rubber alloy should transplant those of clove-studded roasts, pine needles and any other chestnut-roasting jive smell in your own home and those of all of your surrounding neighbors for several hours.

Here's a real Xmas morning "stumper": Instead of toys in the stocking for the young ones around the house, fill each stocking on the hearth with a prosthetic foot -- a real ampu-teazer.

Find any church nativity set and surround it with "Police Line -- Do Not Cross" tape, then make it look like baby Jesus shot one of the Three Wise Men with a handgun. Preferably the black king. Then you can have Jesus with a talk balloon, saying, "I thought the frankincense was a gun!" A two-headed baby Jesus is also a fun changeling substitution.

Another fun one is to rip up cotton balls and throw ketchup on them, in front of the fireplace. That way, when everyone comes into the living room for Xmas morning, you can say, "Uh-oh. White hair and blood. Looks like the dog got him. Poor Santa."

Bwah-har-har-har. "Happy" Holidays. Love, Cintra.

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