It took a while, but I officially hate Black Friday now. Capitalist Excess Saturday depresses me to no end. Sucker Sunday, Cyber Monday, Take All My Money Tuesday and Wimpy Consumer Wednesday leave me feeling tense and exploited even if I haven't spent a dime at the mall.

Then there's Identity Theft Thursday, Fiscal Disaster Friday and Suffocate Me in My Sleep Saturday followed by 22 or 23 more shopping days until Christmas and the inevitable anticlimax and spiritual malaise the season embodies.

My discontent with the holiday is as much a function of age as anything else. This is my 47^th Christmas, so I've seen more than my fair share of these jingle-bell abominations over the years. When you feel your allegiance shifting from Little Cindy-Lou Who to the Grinch, you know you're in the grip of a profound existential crisis no amount of ho-ho-ho can deliver you from.

What accounts for this humbuggery, you ask? With the exception of James Brown dropping dead on Christmas morning last year, nothing particularly horrible ruined the holiday for me.

Sure, there was a period when I wrestled with the "true meaning of Christmas" vis-a-vis its blatant offense to my faith, but even that became less of an issue once biblical archeology settled on early spring as the most likely time of Jesus' actual birth.

Once the biblical scholars took the historical Christ out of Christmas, the spirit of Saturnalia -- the ancient Roman festival that the early Christians adapted to curry favor with the empire -- was free to assert itself. We moderns are so deep into the celebration of Saturnalia that we're only a decade or two away from painting our faces and frolicking in togas in the center of town like our Roman forebears.

It was a relief when department stores began promoting "Xmas sales" to avoid offending non-Christians. Truth in advertising is a good thing, especially when "X" is finally understood to be a stand-in for Saturnalia, the forgotten holiday of excess and tomfoolery.

There's nothing like knowledge of a holy day's roots to put its contemporary expressions into perspective. Saturnalia was conceived by the Romans to honor white-bearded Saturn, first born among the monstrous Titans, devourer of his own children and ruler of the universe. Saturn consumed everything that came before him, making him the perfect holiday mascot for the next four weeks.

Jupiter, the son Saturn thought he swallowed for breakfast one morning, overthrew him in a violent coup. Saturn's appetite for material consumption on a cosmic scale made him so reckless, he mistook a rock in swaddling clothes for the infant Jupiter. Eventually, Saturn became easy pickings for a godling whose own ruthlessness mirrored his father's in every way.

The war in heaven was not pretty, resulting in the Titan's castration in one version of the myth, his eventual imprisonment in Tartarus and a lot of hard feelings. The hearth during Saturnalia celebrates Saturn's blood and sacrifice in establishing Rome's first Golden Age, which, perhaps, is echoed in the red stockings nailed to mantles two millennia later.

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My old friends are relieved they don't have to worry about getting Christmas cards from me anymore. They're vaguely aware of my dark views and aren't sympathetic to them. They assume that getting a card from me is either an act of hostility or hypocrisy on my part.

Still, I have an urge every now and then to send a holiday card to old friends I've fallen out of touch with. Usually, I give up because it's difficult not to be overcome by waves of nausea while browsing through rows of treacly holiday cards featuring Baby Jesus cooing beatifically in the manger like some Saturday morning cartoon character. If only it was just Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer or Frosty the Snowman associated with such banality. "War on Christmas"? Why doesn't someone declare war on Saturnalia for equal time?

Too bad you can't buy cards depicting Christ standing triumphantly over Saturn's crushed body moments before the old Titan is thrown headlong into the endless expanse of Tartarus. I'd buy holiday cards like that by the box every year. Now that would put me in a proper holiday mood.