For the past few weeks, many people at the happy little community college where I work have seen me in the hallway or at meetings or on my knees trying to clear a photocopier paper jam and asked the question I often hear near the end of the fall semester: "Are you going to the party?"

"Maybe," I repeated each time I was asked. I hate to sound like Scroogy McGrinch or Grinchy McScooge, but I just don't always like to go to our work party at this time of year.

They were, of course, referring to our annual holiday party. Up until a decade ago, we called it a "Christmas party," but then we joined the fictional "War on Christmas" and started calling it a "Holiday Party."

There is no actual "War on Christmas," and anyone who thinks there is simply being victimized by yet another ridiculous and hypocritical conspiracy theory spun by the right-wing media. Bill O'Reilly got this one started a few years ago when he blasted Wal-Mart for having its greeters say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" to customers as they walked in the doors. As he blustered and bloviated, O'Reilly didn't bother to mention that his own website proclaimed "Happy Holidays," but ethical consistency isn't a strength of any right-wing media personality. Blubbering about a phony "War on Christmas" gets them attention and ratings, so they blubber away.

My fellow employees at our happy little community college still vacillate between calling the annual celebration a "Holiday Party" and a "Christmas Party." Most of the people who I work with self-identify as "Christian," but we're not really the evangelical types obsessed with convincing the world to accept a narrow sets of beliefs or burn in hell forever. The Jewish, Muslim, agnostic, and atheist people share pretty much the same live-and-let-live viewpoint. Our Muslim employees, for example, are not seen going from classroom to classroom trying to convert everyone they encounter to Islam. Our Christians don't hit people over the head with the Bible. Our Jewish people don't threaten anyone with a burning menorah. Our atheists don't scream "God is dead!" at the top of their lungs in the middle of a curriculum committee meeting. And our agnostics don't grab people by the collar and beg them to be as unsure as they are.

I would call myself a liberal-secular-spiritual humanist raised in a Christian tradition. That's why I check the "other" box on any form that asks my religion. "Liberal-secular-spiritual humanist raised in a Christian tradition" doesn't fit well on a standardized form. When people say "Christmas Party," I don't get offended or chide them for being insensitive to non-Christians. I just assume they celebrate Christmas. When people say "Holiday Party," I don't criticize them for bowing to supposedly oppressive leftist politically correctness. I just assume they're talking about the upcoming holidays. It's not a big, fat, hairy deal for me.

Anyone who thinks that Christmas is exclusively a Christian holiday simply isn't living in the real world. In which book of the New Testament do we find Santa Claus? (Or as the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti calls him, "the fat red Christ.") Christmas has long ago been co-opted by the most anti-Christian movement of all: capitalism. Just because the wise men brought gifts to the newborn Jesus, that doesn't mean every chain store in America has to open at 4 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving so that everyone can fight over the latest overpriced piece of mindless electronic equipment, trampling the store greeters before they can form the first syllables of whatever holiday greeting they might utter.

Anyone else who thinks capitalism and Christianity are compatible needs to explain why Jesus threw the money-changers out of the temple. (Watch out Wall Street--you're next!) Or they need to explain what Jesus was thinking when he said that it is harder for a wealthy person to get to enter the Kingdom of God than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. (Is "corporation" one of Dante's circles of hell?) Maybe they just need to be tied up and forced to watch the new Michael Moore documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story. Moore might be a bit hyperbolic here and there, but one aspect of capitalism that he hits dead on is its anti-Christian nature.

So I usually just call it a "Holiday Party." There are several religious/secular holidays going on between semesters, and Christmas is certainly more than the exclusive property of Christians. I like my language to reflect reality. The word "holiday" just seems most in touch with reality to me. But, again, connection with reality isn't really the strong suit of the "War on Christmas" crowd.

It wasn't the "War on Christmas" that made me hesitate when my coworkers asked whether or not I would be going to this year's party. I certainly enjoy the good company, the chance to interact with co-workers without the pressing business of our various jobs weighing us down, the food, the drink, the laughter. I like a good party as much as the next person. And I respect and admire my colleagues who work hard to plan the party. But two words related to our holiday party tradition always make me consider skipping the festivities. Two words make my skin crawl and my chest tighten. Two words make me want to think up an excuse for not joining my coworkers in a celebration of the season.

Those two words are "Yankee Swap"--or, as I call it, "evil, capitalist pig, greedy, jerky, bastard, I'm-taking-your-stuff-and-you-can't-stop-me, merry-freakin'-Christmas."

On the surface, Yankee Swap seems like good fun. Everyone brings a wrapped present, supposedly something valued under a preset amount, say $10. Then everyone at the party is issued a number. To get things started, the first person selects a present, unwraps it, and then holds it aloft for the approving ooohs and aaahs of everyone in attendance. It sounds pleasant up to this point. But then the evil begins.

The second person then gets to either choose another wrapped gift or take the present picked by the first person. If the first gift was something nice but not outstanding (a coffee mug or stationary set, for example), the second person usually selects a new gift. There is more unwrapping, revealing, ooohing, and aaahing. Everyone is happy. But if the first gift is something that everyone covets, watch out!

Over the years, I've seen my most mild-mannered, kind, generous colleagues nearly tear lottery tickets from the hands of their startled coworkers. Secretaries have taken cute puppy photo calendars from history professors. Deans have absconded with Starbucks gift cards cherished by custodians. Best friends have snarled at each other over who would possess a scarf made from some synthetic material so artificial it looked like a flame-retardant mini-blanket. People stop short of shouting, "I'm taking your stuff, and you can't stop me!" but the fire in the eye makes nearly the same statement.

In any other context, this kind of behavior would be appalling. If I walked into a colleague's office, saw a nice stapler on his desk, picked it up, and informed him that it was now mine--well, let's just say I wouldn't be the most popular guy at work.

But at the holiday party, when the next number gets called in Yankee Swap, a chorus of voices can usually be heard calling out exhortations like, "Betty's tree ornament is really nice--take it!" or "Grab Gary's book light! He doesn't even know how to read!" Too many people become rabble-rousers, encouraging the rule-sanctioned theft of other people's gifts as if Christian charity had nothing to do with the holidays, as if the spirit of giving had suddenly been displaced by the spirit of thieving.

Of course, I'm overlooking the fact that the people who have their gifts taken from them then get to select another unwrapped gift. But this seems like cold comfort to those who liked their first gift. They might be going from a new wallet with a $10 bill inside to a dented picture frame bought from the discount scrap heap. Not a good trade. And the whole sense of getting a consolation prize feels like some half-hearted, underfunded welfare program in the aggressively capitalist context of Yankee Swap.

I've actually heard of a version of Yankee Swap with unlimited gift taking. People just sit around in a circle taking each other's gifts until everyone has had a turn to steal from someone else. I think this version is called Fox News Network Yankee Swap because it is simply wrong in every conceivable way.

The worst part of our happy little community college holiday party Yankee Swap game is that we usually have anywhere for thirty to fifty people playing. The cringe-worthy exchanges go on and on, with everyone getting a chance to show their most greedy instincts as well as numerous chances to be the victim of their coworker's greed. If there were only ten or fifteen people involved, at least the ordeal would be over sooner and not drag through the afternoon.

The only version of Yankee Swap that ever works well is "Gag-Gift Yankee Swap." I have no moral objections to someone stealing a two-pound beef stick or a package of bald-head-wipes and sticking someone else with an oven mitt featuring the embroidered face of Mitt Romney.

And I guess our holiday party with Yankee Swap isn't as bad as the experience I had two decades ago when I had just started a new job. I showed up to our office holiday party to discover that the dozen other staff members had bought and wrapped gifts for everyone else--but no one had told the new guy about that part of the office holiday party tradition. I sat there for an hour smiling and accepting the thoughtful gifts from everyone else while repeating lamely, "No one told me ... I'll bring in gifts next week."

If gift exchanges have to be part of holiday parities, my favorite activity is "Secret Santa." I love the idea of shopping for someone I would never think of getting a gift for--the new math professor, for example, or the purchasing manager who I've known for seventeen years but never thought of as more than the well-dressed guy who has helped me fill out financial forms that I couldn't figure out on my own. I enjoy the mission of discovering what these people like, what their interests and passions are. I do my detective work, observing them from a distance, secretly speaking with coworkers who know them well, stopping at stores I might not otherwise enter to find just the right gift within the prescribed price range. If it turns out the new math professor collects movie posters from the 1950s and the purchasing manager is a connoisseur or exotic teas, then I've learned something that can help make them happy, as well as something about the human race in general.

Of course, anyone who gets me as the target of his or her secret gift-giving, I'm ridiculously easy--pretty much any book will be just fine.

Secret Santa is anti-capitalism at its best. The focus is all on giving and not at all on getting. I get so caught up in giving to someone else that I always feel a small jolt of surprise when I remember that someone actually got something for me. In fact, you only know who gave you a gift if the giver tells you. Giving is anathema to free market capitalism. The only holiday activity more socialist that Secret Santa would be just having everyone contribute toward a donation to a local charity (which, by the way, is my absolute favorite holiday giving idea).

If anyone wants to see the difference between Secret Santa and Yankee Swap at its darkly comedic best, just watch the second season holiday episode of the delightful television show The Office. Michael (the clueless but sort of well-meaning boss) tries to enliven the staff holiday party with a last-minute change from Secret Santa to Yankee Swap. What had been a group of kind-hearted folks who got thoughtful gifts directed toward a specific coworker becomes a cut-throat bunch of free-market greed-misers who crave the best toys and didn't care who they have to steal from. Secret Santa turns into a game of "Not-so-Secret Satanic Christmas." One character says of Yankee Swap, "I thought that was called 'Nasty Christmas.'" Another bursts into tears. A third runs from the room mid-swap when her home-made gift is belittled. Holiday happiness gets sucked out of the party like air from the lungs of the drowning. It takes fifteen bottles of vodka, badly place mistletoe, and photocopied butt cheeks to restore the holiday cheer.

When I told my wise coworker Faye about my distaste for Yankee Swap, she said, "But it's not real greed. It's just a chance for people to have fun with a parody of greedy behavior." She may have a point. I don't really believe my coworkers are a bunch of heartless thieves who live to wrest gifts from their friend's desperate grasp. Perhaps Yankee Swap is just a cathartic activity that lets us act out our worst instincts so that we can better focus on our more altruistic motives during the holiday season. That's a nice way of looking at it, but that viewpoint doesn't make it any easier for me to see the hurt face of a colleague who really wanted the hand-painted Christmas necktie that has just been taken from him.

Ultimately, I decided to go to this year's holiday party for our happy little community college. And guess what? I had a great time. People brought toy donations to be distributed by the local police department. I bought a 50-50 lottery ticket and lost, which was fine because the proceeds were donated to charity. The food was so good that I had three helpings, skipped dinner that night, and went to bed still feeling bloated. I hugged close friends, reconnected with people I hadn't seen in a while, had some meaningful conversations, laughed at some great stories, forgot about the pile of work on my desk for one afternoon, and managed to avoid the one big jerk I can barely stand to be in the same room with. People played Nintendo Wii and sang karaoke, so everyone had a nice chance to loosen up and be a little silly.

This year, though, when Yankee Swap commenced, I was ready. I was positioned near the exit with my coat on the back of my chair. By the time the first greedy act lead to the first disappointed face, I had slipped out the door.

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