I’ve always enjoyed Charles Dickens’s novella “A Christmas Carol,” and occasionally one of the slew of adaptations made of it (“A Muppet Christmas Carol” being a personal favorite). I am not a religious person whatsoever and Christmas does not carry that connotation for me. I don’t get giddy at the mention of the virgin birth or the star of Bethlehem. Yet I still find “A Christmas Carol” such a timeless story. Why is that?

The story is constantly purported to be about the spirit of Christmas yet in the book and the movie adaptations I don’t notice a single mention of Jesus. Wait, that doesn’t seem right. To me, the story is about a mean, greedy old man who dreams he sees some ghosts and turns over a new leaf accordingly when they show him just how much everyone would hate him if he didn’t. It seems more like the book is about the benefits of kindness than anything else. Dickens doesn’t mention Scrooge making a regular habit of going to church or praying regularly; he just shows the old man going around giving to charity and being an all-around nice guy.

So what do the holidays mean to me? It’s a chance to catch up with old friends and acquaintances, to see family, to get some time off of school and/or work, to both give and receive. Just because I’m not on board with the religious spiel doesn’t mean that this time of year doesn’t mean anything to me. To me, this time of year is what you make it. For some people, that might mean raising a huff about whether signs should say “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas,” while to others it might mean going to a special church service. For others still it might be an excuse to get gifts. There are countless traditions, religious and otherwise, that circle around this season.

For a country that raises so much hubbub about the holiday season and what it’s about, I’ve never seen it get more commercialized. It seems like almost any connotation it may have had has been forcefully acquired by an alliance between department stores and card companies. At a time of year where they claim you should be your kindest, it seems the American shopping public is at its worst. Honestly, sometimes I’m afraid to drive near a shopping mall during the month of December. Whenever I heard a story on the news of a hapless shopper trampled to death by a mindless mob of other shoppers trying to get 30 percent off, people can hear me making an annoyed groan in the next room.

I celebrate Christmas because it’s what my family celebrates and it gives us time to be together. If someone feels like including me in on their festivities I’ll be excited no matter what they are (I remember I was thrilled when my Jewish friend gave me a dreidel). Remember to be nice this holiday season, and it wouldn’t hurt to let it spill into the rest of the year either. So to everyone I wish a merry Christmas, happy Chanukah, rad Ramadan, super Saturnalia, kwazy Kwanzaa, a Festivus for the rest of us and whatever else you may or may not be celebrating.