Can the Carols ... Give Me Target and Sarah Jessica Parker

“Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, ring ting tingling too.”

For some, the sound of “Sleigh Ride,” the 1948 Parish-Anderson hit, brings to mind Perry Como Christmas specials. For me, it means Target ads.

Ah, Target.

How I love its ads. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without them. Or Gap’s. Or Zales’, Macy’s, Albertson’s and the whole Madison Avenue master chorale.

As a discreetly lapsed Protestant, I should disapprove. Commercialization of Christmas. Tsk. Whatever happened to slowly adding brandy to the fruitcake, Advent calendars, a church service, a meal and perhaps a carol or two?

A miracle, that’s what.

I don’t want to live in some vaguely European snow globe. I hate Christmas cake. Advent calendars are no replacement for Sarah Jessica Parker in a fuzzy Gap sweater.

OK, maybe the ads debase Christmas, particularly the one from Hollywood Bail Bonds about how to spring Santa after a DUI, but they also make it. They democratize it. Christmas is no longer just for Christians; it’s for everyone. Come to think of it, TV spots and the malls of America have returned it to its rightful owners, back to the pagans who invented the original solstice office party long before the miracle in the manger. Christmas isn’t for any one religion anymore, but for anyone looking for a party.

This year, “Sleigh Ride” reminded me to stop working and start thinking of fun. It made me think of my family and friends, of presents for the kids, cards for grown-up kids. It presented so many benign dilemmas: to have a tree or not have a tree? Diet or not diet? Travel or not to travel? Buy a slutty frock or less slutty frock?

Ads are the call to one and all to get out the champagne flutes, unravel the lights, load up on jumbo packs of candy from Trader Joe’s. Where would Christmas be without Restoration Hardware Eiffel Tower ornaments, Santa suits for dogs and Stilton cheese by the wheel? What other season celebrates bad taste, what other event (besides a heat wave) makes us grateful for the DWP?

Left to its original brief, Christmas would quietly come and go in a worshipful way. Maybe it still does for confirmed believers. But for the rest of us, there’s no turning back from its lapse into velvety excess.

Scarves, candies, garnets, a bicycle horn, a bottle of hooch -- that’s the spirit. A Target ad, that’s the hymn.

Of course Christmas sells. Joy is expansive.