Some breathing room for today’s harried Christmas...

Some breathing room for today’s harried Christmas shopper:

There.

That’s the only breathing room available on the biggest shopping day of the year. Enjoy!

Meanwhile, let’s pause for a moment to ponder the day’s meaning.

First, the biggest shopping day of the year marks the official beginning of newspaper holiday cliche season.

From now until Christmas, we’ll be treated to the sounds of cash registers jingling merrily. The problem is, you have to be eligible for Social Security to recall a jingling cash register. Today’s cash registers don’t jingle, or whir, or hum. They engage in the utterly silent electronic transfer of data megabytes, and there’s nothing merry about it.

During cliche season, we’ll inevitably read that Christmas came early for some fortunate citizen. I once worked at a newspaper where, on a memorable December day, Christmas came early at the top of three separate stories. As I recall, Christmas came early for the mother of newborn triplets, for a tow-truck driver acquitted in the murder of his wife, and for some other lucky duck. That was one premature Christmas.

But more than just marking the start of cliche season, the biggest shopping day of the year is noteworthy for its underlying mystery. That is: Why on earth would anyone go shopping on the biggest shopping day of the year?

I’d rather snuggle into a refrigerator box under a freeway bridge than go shopping on the biggest shopping day of the year.

There’s the parking, the 20-minute shark-like knifing through the lot for a decent--that is, any--spot.

Then there are the lines at the ATM, the restroom, the coffee place. There’s the smell of the corn dog, the roar of the crowd, the frantic cries of parents scouring the toy shelves for this year’s gotta-have-it-if-I-wanna-be-loved hot new item.

And there are the perfume stalkers. Maneuver your way through the crush at any department store, and from out of nowhere, beautiful women will blast you with PineSol-smelling potions called things like Vincenzo Beefaroni, or Corruption! for Men.

When I shrieked after one such ambush, my quick-witted, spritz-wielding assailant instantly said: “Maybe you’d want something more masculine ... “

It was a great line, but not enough to make me traipse through a mall--even Ventura’s sparkling new showplace--on a day like today. There’s no place like a mall for blenders and bedspreads, but they are no place to be on the busiest shopping day of the year.

Until recently, I thought I was pretty much alone in this belief. But then I heard about a Canadian group that has targeted the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S. for a 24-hour “consumer fast” called Buy Nothing Day.

“It’s spread through 30 countries around the world,” said Kalle Lasn, director of the Media Foundation in Vancouver.

“There are all kinds of shenanigans, all kinds of street theater,” he said. “We have credit card cutups. People rent pig outfits and dash through the malls. We estimate more than 1 million people will make a little personal pact with themselves, to see what not buying anything for 24 hours feels like.”

In some places, Buy Nothing carolers have treated shoppers to a version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” that begins: “Uh-oh, we’re in the red, dear ... “ Some hand out “Christmas Gift Exemption Certificates” that can be downloaded free from the Media Foundation’s Web site (www.adbusters.org).

The aim is not to drive stores out of business but to start a debate about excessive consumption, said Lasn, who calls himself a “culture jammer.”

Yes, he does give Christmas gifts--modest ones.

“But sometimes I’ll tell friends, instead of spending 50 bucks on each other, why don’t we get together Saturday afternoon at 3 and whoop it up for four hours?”

Lasn reeled off stats as familiar as a cash register’s merry jingle: The average American is exposed to 3,000 marketing messages a day. We have 4% of the world’s population, but consume 25% of its goods. And on, and on.

I won’t be giving my wife a “Christmas Gift Exemption Certificate” any time soon. I’d like to say that this will be the year I’ll write her a poem and she’ll bake me a loaf of bread. Unfortunately, neither of us is that crazy about poetry or bread.

But on the busiest shopping day of the year, maybe we’ll cast aside our credit cards, gaze into each other’s eyes, and think of the sage who knew a thing or two about the perils of overconsumption.

“Eternity,” he observed, “is two people and a ham.”

Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or by e-mail at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.