I see this time of year as the holiday season. Not Christmas season.

Living in a secular country, I would assume that the holidays would be celebrated. Not a select religious day.

Regardless of our secularity, the holiday season is utterly ruined by fake snow, wreaths of plants not indigenous to South Africa, food that makes one feel warmer than necessary, and making this stunning country the epitome of the misery of Christmas in the Northern hemisphere.

And, to top it all off, the spirit of the holiday season is ruined exponentially by the sound of Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas blaring from every speaker.

I try not to think about shopkeepers and Christian South Africans totally destroying the fact that our holiday season falls in not only the most beautiful climate in the world, but also the most beautiful country in the world.

But those Christmas carols drive me up a wall.

I don’t really want Let it Snow stuck in my head for three days. I have only ever seen snow in this country in the Drakensberg. Let’s keep it that way. I mean, have you been to Canada? Snow isn’t a good thing.

Christmas carols are a depressing and annoying imposition of one culture over others who do not believe or don’t care.

My nieces and nephews, who are being brought up to make up their own minds on religion, are being obliged to listen to stories of Mary’s boy child, and other songs that would turn any self-respecting human being away from Christianity.

Surely that’s not the intention.

As one who doesn’t really care for religion, I am not opposed to people practicing their faith as they wish – in their own homes. If Michael Buble singing about conifers is your thing, so be it. But please stop forcing it down other people’s ear canals.

No single religion or religious practice should intrude on anyone else’s right to a peaceful holiday season.

Especially when that practice involves Justin Bieber crooning about the Lord in his pre-adolescent shriek.

Or Boney M having paedophilic fantasies about little drummer boys.

(And you wonder why Catholic priests molest altar boys.)

I really don’t want to hear about someone in a big red suit judging my actions and then breaking into my home.

Just like you don’t want to hear fireworks on Diwali, or be ‘defiled’ by heavy metal, I don’t want your assault on my ears.

It’s invasive, disturbing and downright disrespectful.

(Unless of course, it’s Bill Nighy’s character in Love Actually singing Christmas is All Around.)

If you celebrate Christmas, keep your carols to yourself. Making caroling a personal family affair will make them far more enjoyable than listening to the bare-chested Beach Boys singing creepily about the man with all the toys.

After all, I’m sure after 2000-odd years of listening to people polluting the spirit of his birthday, even Jesus himself may go postal on the next studio recording Jingle Bell Rock.