Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year. The bells jingle. Charlie Brown finally saves the day. Oh, and there are cookies – lots and lots of cookies.

But what does Christmas really mean?

If you are the average American, it means spending. Christmas is notoriously driven by extreme consumerism, but it seems to be getting worse. From mid-November to January, we’re amidst another era of excess. Christmastime seems like the ’80s, but you replace all the cocaine with pie. If Santa followed the former model, he’d look more like Lindsay Lohan’s disc jockey girlfriend and less like an elderly Chris Farley.

Black Friday was especially frenzied this year, with the mania of Christmas ending in death. The tragic death of the Wal-Mart seasonal employee in Long Island had many people wondering the point of all this holiday spending hype.

The needless hysteria was only for a better deal on some unnecessary capitalistic desire, and more than ever, these holidays are a seemingly simple escape from the perils of our hospice-like economy.

According to the National Retail Federation’s 2008 Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, nearly 32 percent of shoppers are using credit cards to pay for Christmas gifts. Both Visa and Mastercard have seen spiked transactions. Feel better, economy?

A recent New York Times article declared this the season to whip out the plastic. It says this is the sign of growing consumer confidence. Is that what it means?

What happened to buying things with real tender? Without the tangible loss of money and with the growing pressure and stress of holiday shopping, are consumers really considering the high cost of buying now and paying later?

Christmas isn’t about Jesus Christ. We might as well refer to the holiday as X-mas – The blank holiday, the void, a sugar coma-ed day off from work, a drunken blur of media thrown at the masses.

Perhaps it will mean more in years to come, but at the moment, X-mas is the time of blinded spending. In January, the blindfold comes off and you look in shock and horror at your credit card statement.

That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

Briana Monasky can be reached at [email protected]