I'm looking for someone to do a job, easy money if you've got the right skills. You gotta like travel, not mind the cold, and be quick on snowshoes. Oh ya, it involves killing someone, but it'll be a feather in any assassin's cap, a once-in-a-lifetime gig that you'll never find on the CIA's job board. It must be completed no later than December 24th, no witnesses, and that includes the elves.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to kill Santa Claus, and I'm not talking about those two-bit imposters that ride on floats, ring bells, and act as secondary diapers for incontinent children at shopping malls. I'm talking about the real deal here, Saint Nick himself, that fat, jolly bastard from the North Pole. I want him pushing up lichen in the tundra come the next thaw, the workshop burned, and that prissy little reindeer's shiny bright nose switched off.

Ever since the old bugger got it in his head to stuff all those stockings hung with care, it's been a never-ending parade of shopkeepers, advertisers, and hucksters of all kinds and creeds, ready to top up what old Saint Nick didn't see fit to fill. Every year it starts earlier, the rush to put up decorations and start promotions, to the point that kids barely have time to throw-up their Halloween candy before it's time to fill out their wish lists in all known file formats, making sure Santa can make his list up properly and check it twice without translation errors.

Everywhere I turn, lights are going up, mistletoe is being hung, store fronts are lit up brighter than a Victoria Day fireworks display, and people look about as merry as a bunch of nineteenth-century English coal miners, marching in and out of stores as they buy up every piece of crap that the human marketing mind can conceive. If there's a really hot item that no one can do without, then it's time to put up your dukes, Queensberry Rules be damned, the idea of turning the other cheek about as likely as Dick Cheney doing wind sprints on the White House lawn.

What used to be maybe two weeks of festivities has turned into two months of cheap excuses to make anything and everything "merry" at double the price and three times the calories. Coffee houses have already trundled out their "Christmas blends" and other festive recipes, dumping cinnamon and nutmeg into everything short of mineral water and emptying your wallet for the privilege. Chocolate stores are in high gear with jolly looking gift packs of bonbons and other coma-inducing treats that now seem to be okay to eat because they have a nice red bow around them. And if I have one more person try to sell me a sticky bar of fruitcake when it's still November and the leaves haven't even fallen yet, I promise you there will at least be one merry little Santa's Helper who won't be home for Christmas.

All year I'm told that I should watch my waistline, cut down on sugar, eat my vegetables, and don't touch anything that could possibly have come from a cow, but for six weeks it's okay to drink steamed eggnog with a dollop of whipping cream every morning?

If nothing else, I'm starting to wonder if Santa has a few retirement funds tied up in Lipitor stock.

What happened to the religious holiday? Everyone else has got them figured out. You get together with family and friends, share some time and some food together, and then you carry on. Sure the kids might get a little token gift to shut them up during dinner, but not a pile of high-tech wizardry that maxes out three gold cards. Whose birthday are we celebrating? Bill Gates'?

No, it's clear that Santa has to go. He's the one who brings the gifts when we're young, that jolly man who slides down the chimney like a well-oiled cat burglar, the guy whose act needs to get topped every year without fail. The little people of Whoville really do need their Grinch, and you're it, should you take the job. Payment upon completion, all in small, unmarked bills.

Your kids will thank you when it comes time to pay for college.