Ho, ho, ho, Merry Christmas; I hope vestigial Santa was good to you. Santa’s always been difficult to spot on Christmas, doing his work in the dark of night, but it seems the spry old elf is keeping a lower profile each year.

Down at the multiplex, Billy Bob Thornton portrays Santa as a drunken, lecherous thief, sarcastically exploding the holiday fantasies of one child after another. The meaning of Christmas changes through the years, and change now comes faster than ever. As much as we might want it to, it’s not going to change back, not even a little, so if Santa Claus has become vestigial, baby Jesus must have been sent back to the stable.

Christmas now seems a one-day respite between pre- and post-holiday sales. Christmas revenue is sluggish this year, for the second year in a row. Some experts blame the threat of terrorism, some blame the weather. Either way, it’s bad news. Forty percent of American retail sales are made between Thanksgiving and Christmas; four out of every ten dollars of our national discretionary spending fall in just four weeks. That’s why the nightly progress reports on radio and tee vee. Perhaps runaway shopping is the new meaning of Christmas, maybe it has to be, maybe the economy leans too heavily upon it for Christmas to have any other meaning.

If that’s the case, perhaps we should retire our lonely, unbelieved-in, vestigial Santa Claus. His replacement, spokesperson for the New Christmas could be Patricia VanLester of Orange City, Florida. Ms. VanLester says she was trampled unconscious at 6 a.m. the day after Thanksgiving, in the rush to get $29 DVD players at Wal-Mart. In the spirit of the new holiday season, Wal-Mart executives have accused Ms. VanLester of taking a dive, of being a chronic malingerer and a filer of bogus lawsuits. Both sides have retained legal counsel. Ms. VanLester’s attorney says he’ll release her medical records if Wal-Mart releases the security-camera video of the incident.

This is all very shortsighted. Wal-Mart is missing an opportunity here. Instead of lawsuits, it should pay Ms. VanLester to license her image. Then, instead of letting Macy’s – the competition – kick off the holiday spending season with obsolete, vestigial Santa on a float in a parade, Wal-Mart could get all the attention by hiring a cohort of stunt women to dress up as Patricia VanLester and be trampled by early-morning, Friday-after-Thanksgiving crowds at Wal-Marts across America.

Here in the backwater of Vermont, we’re a bit behind on holiday legal wrangling. Over in the capital, Montpelier, Seth Chalmer filed a complaint about colored lights and wreaths and a decorated evergreen in front of city hall. Mr. Chalmer is Jewish and feels the display is offensive to non-Christians. I’m not in favor of government forcing one religion on everybody, but lights and wreaths? I wonder if Mr. Chalmer knows the tradition of hanging evergreens at the winter solstice pre-dates Christianity, that it’s actually a Druidic tradition. As Mr. Chalmer is not a Druid, he may still feel left out, but offended? By Druids? The same day that story appeared in the local newspaper, there was a wire service photo of Israeli soldiers, lighting a candle on a Menorah in their barracks. Next to the Menorah stood – a Christmas tree.

Here in Burlington, on the green at the University of Vermont (which receives a modest state subsidy), is a ten-foot electric Menorah. For the past few years, the Menorah has made its annual appearance down at the waterfront, on – good G-d! – city property. No complaints I’m aware of. Back in ’97, some college kids had the Menorah bolted to the roof of an old Pontiac and drove it around town, yelling, “Happy Hanukkah!” I had just moved to Burlington and thought that was pretty neat.

Maybe Seth Chalmer has a point. Christmas has become a crass display of bad manners and greed that goes on for a month, pre-empts everything else, causes traffic jams and puts everyone in a foul mood. It may not be religiously offensive, but it’s culturally offensive. As long as the meaning of Christmas is changing so quickly, let’s keep it changing. I’m going to keep my receipts from this Christmas season and next year I’ll spend just as much, but I’m going to give it away to worthy causes, move the economic activity toward sectors where it’s really needed, instead of trading near-meaningless gimcracks with friends and family. I’ll feel better, it will keep me off the streets and out of the central business district – and maybe I’ll have time for some real Christmas spirit. Who’s with me?