I swore I wasn’t going to write about Christmas.

“It’s too easy,” I thought. “It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.”

Because I like a challenge, and bashing Christmas — well, that’s hardly a challenge. But when Christmas supplies and trinkets began appearing in area shops shortly before Halloween, I was tempted. I mean, if that’s not an excuse to rant uncontrollably for hours, I don’t know what is. But, still, it seemed too easy. Everybody hates it when the stores start selling Christmas stuff at some ridiculously early date and, when it comes to writing about stuff I hate, I like to pick my spots. So I kept quiet.
Then I suffered a nasty shock.

There are two radio stations, WEXT (97.7-FM) and WEQX (102.7-FM), that I like to listen to when I’m driving. But if neither of them are playing songs I want to hear, I flip to my fallback station, and guilty pleasure: WTRY 98.3, the oldies station. This station was always fun, and it got even more fun when it expanded its definition of oldies to include ’80s music. Sure, this made me feel old, but I didn’t care, because any station willing to play “Runaround Sue,” “Superstition” and “Hungry Like the Wolf” is OK by me. So I’m always flipping over to 98.3, because it’s the only place you can hear “Like a Virgin” and “Help!” back to back.

But last week when I flipped over to 98.3, I made a deeply troubling discovery. “What’s this?” I wondered, wrinkling my nose. “Rudolph? Reindeers?” Then it hit me: The station had already switched to an all-Christmas music format! I flew into a rage. I couldn’t change the channel fast enough. When I got to a computer, I opened up my Netflix account and moved the 1975 horror movie “Black Christmas” into my queue. I thought about renting “Bad Santa,” too. Maybe a good dose of bile would help combat the saccharine joylessness of the never-ending public spectacle we call the Holiday Season.

But I doubted it. The fact is, you can try and try, but there’s no escaping Christmas. It’s like some creeping invasive weed that’s always inching into new territory. If Thanksgiving used to mark the start of Christmas, well, soon Halloween will, if it doesn’t already. There are already year-round Christmas stores for people who can’t get enough of this stuff. Is the year-round Christmas radio station next? It probably already exists somewhere, now that I think about it. (If you know of one, don’t tell me. It will only make me depressed.)

In October, a colleague of mine expressed anger about the early Christmas displays in stores. “I totally agree,” I said, and launched into my Christmas tirade. “No, no, no!” she yelled. “That’s not what I meant at all! The problem isn’t Christmas! The problem is that it’s too early for Christmas!”

My colleague has a point, but I’m here to say that Christmas, and the way we celebrate it, is part of the problem. As I child, I always liked Christmas. But the relentless good cheer and nonstop festivities can make it difficult to cope if anything bad should actually happen during the holiday, which is what happened to me one year, when I returned home from college and learned that a friend of mine had committed suicide.

It was difficult to sit in church and sing songs about hope and joy, and I didn’t have the energy to feign happiness, which is what I thought I had to do, when I saw old friends and acquaintances. There was this odd emptiness to everything, and I didn’t know how to reconcile it with my idea of what Christmas was supposed to be.

But time passes.

Eventually, I came to terms with Christmas. I lived in Alabama for a few years after college; every year I would fly home for the holiday. And at some point, my idea of Christmas changed. I understood that it was about being with my family, and that I could celebrate it however I wanted. I began to appreciate the solemnity of the Advent season, and the quiet magic of a Christmas Eve service. I like sending and receiving Christmas cards. There’s even some Christmas music that I like, although you’d never find it on the radio. The pianist George Winston’s “December” album is pretty good, and I miss going to my old church in New Hampshire, where a member of the choir sang a stirring rendition of “O Holy Night” on Christmas Eve.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with the Holiday Season, which continues to be a major annoyance. I’m still not sure I should have written this column — perhaps, in even acknowledging the Holiday Season, I’ve become part of the problem. But when I heard “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire),” I simply couldn’t help myself. Because if I have to go over a month without hearing “I Will Survive” or “Good Vibrations,” well, I want the world to know why that puts me in such a foul mood. And because nobody actually likes the stuff that passes for Christmas music on the radio, I’m confident that I speak for millions.

Foss Forward makes a weekly appearance in print, in The Gazette’s Saturday Lifestyles section.