I’m having a difficult time getting into the “holiday spirit” this year. More precisely, I’m having difficulty getting into certain aspects of the holiday spirit this year.

The tree and other decorations are up at my home. The kids have started watching perennial favorite holiday movies and my daughter is playing Christmas music. I’ve loaded the pantry up with sugar, flour, chocolate and baking ingredients for when I begin my marathon baking sessions of hours spent making a huge mess of my kitchen and loading up plates of goodies that must be delivered promptly to keep me from eating them all myself. I somehow find this chaotic process relaxing and I’m looking forward to that particular aspect of my holiday traditions.

Other aspects? Not so much.

I noticed the other night that some of the perennial favorite holiday movies are, well, kind of disturbing. I’ve seen these films countless times over the years, some of them every single Christmas season I can remember. My kids have now seen them multiple times as well.

But last week’s viewing of the animated “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” resulted in a conversation about how the Santa Claus portrayed in this animated classic is actually a great big jerk who is at least partially responsible for belittling Rudolph and driving him away to survive on his own with the abominable snowman on his tail. The same holds true for the elves and the other reindeer.

Of course, this plot is also that of the classic holiday tune we’ve all been singing for decades now and that pretty much every child in the country knows by heart. Perhaps it’s a sign of the heightened sensibilities of our current era, but the logic behind loving a tune about a bunch of bullies making fun of the “different” reindeer until they suddenly need his help is currently escaping me.

Yet another animated classic, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” is just downright creepy in more ways than one. First, there’s the Burgermeister Meisterburger who forbids play and toys and apparently runs an “orphan asylum” in his town. Then there’s Kris Kringle himself, who bribes kids with toys to get them to behave, warns them that he’s spying on all of them all the time and sings a song that goes something like, “If you sit on my lap today, a kiss a toy is the price you’ll pay.”

Again, I’m sure it has a lot to do with the changing times, but I don’t find those song lyrics wholesome or cute.  

Come to think of it, the entire Santa Claus story with elves spying on kids and convincing children to sit on a stranger’s lap to tell him secrets seems out of step with what we’re trying to teach our children.

I’m not sure if it bothers me more that this tale has developed and persisted and is part of the “magic” of the Christmas season or that my current views of it are possibly tainting my daughter’s Christmas experience and stealing some of her fun.

But, weird and out-of-step with the current times movies and songs aren’t what’s really bothering me.

What’s really bothering me is that the entire holiday season is permeated with a huge focus on buying gifts. I don’t have a problem with gift-giving in general. It can be fun to find that special something for a special someone.

What I do have a problem with is all of the pressure to shop and buy gifts for people out of obligation or because the kids just have to have the latest gadgets. How many times during this season do we hear comments along the lines of, “I have no idea what to get for…” Fill in the blank with mom or dad or any other name.

This just seems silly. We have no idea what to get for people, so we buy something just because, well, so-and-so needs to have something to unwrap. Presumably, that so-and-so has also purchased something for us in return. Great. So now we both have something we don’t really want and have no use for.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to keep the money and just go buy ourselves something we do want and say it’s from so-and-so?

Or better yet, donate the money to people who actually do have needs and not just wants.

As for the kids and the latest gadgets, if I could have back the money from the various things purchased for kids that get played with for a couple of days and then thrown in a toy box never to be seen again, well, let’s just say I could probably take a nice extended vacation.

I’m not a religious person so this holiday season to me has different meaning than it does to others, but no matter if the season is one of profound spiritual significance or one of peace and compassion and kindness and love, spending our hard-earned money or going into debt and completely stressing ourselves out over unwanted crap out of obligation is really missing the point.

Rampant consumerism is tainting our holidays. I love Thanksgiving, but the encroachment of Black Friday continually creeping earlier and earlier into the day seriously troubles me. If we all just stayed home and refused to shop that day, merchants would go back to offering Black Friday deals on ... wait for it ... Friday! Then employees of these stores could maybe spend Thanksgiving with their loved ones instead of waiting for us to rampage the store like we’re zombies after brains or something.

I totally understand that Small-Business Saturday developed as a response to Black Friday, as a way to encourage people to shop from local small businesses as opposed to huge stores and especially online merchants. Do we really need a designated day to tell us that? We should be shopping from small local businesses as often as we can anyway. We have some lovely small businesses in Evanston. It’s definitely easier to sit at home and shop from Amazon — I’m guilty of that, too — but does Amazon really need any more of our business? Our small local merchants absolutely do.

I think that my irritation over the present-buying mania is rubbing off on my general feelings about the entire holiday season. If I wasn’t already irritable, perhaps Santa and Donner being abusive to Rudolph would be easier to chalk up to a silly cartoon and a silly song. Perhaps I am reading too much into beloved classics that have been making children smile for decades.

One of my very favorite Christmas tales has always been the Dr. Seuss classic, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” precisely because it’s about how the Grinch can’t actually steal Christmas. We all get the moral and most of us would agree with it. Maybe we should all try to remember that Christmas, in fact, doesn’t come from a store.