I don’t know if I can take it anymore. They’re everywhere, and each day brings a fresh assault. Stuffed in my mailbox, folded inside each issue of the local newspaper, blaring from the T.V. and radio, filling up the inbox of my email. I’m speaking, of course, of all those catalogs, advertisements and “special, bonus coupons” urging me to take advantage of incredible offers and “the lowest prices of the year.”

It happens every year, surely, as retailers try to end their year in the black and move as much inventory as possible as consumers cross items off their holiday gift-giving lists. And while I would say that I’m pretty sure this year we have gotten fewer and smaller print catalogs from some retailers such as Lands End, Coldwater Creek and Victoria’s Secret who traditionally have sent out a book a week from November ’til Christmas, everywhere else the flood has increased in volume.

It’s understandable, of course, considering the bleak season for merchants last year and their hopes to end this year on a high note, but it’s all feeling rather desperate to me. According to one ad I heard last night, one company has decided one Black Friday wasn’t enough this year; they’re having one each week — but on Saturdays, instead. And we saw how the Black Friday sales began well before the day after Thanksgiving this year, and online sellers spread their Cyber Monday over a week or more of special deals and free shipping. Now it isn’t just the Friday or Sunday papers stuffed with pages and pages of ad inserts from retailers one never hears from the rest of the year. Virtually every day of the week come notices of one-day sales and early-morning doorbusters and sheets of special coupons offering additional percentages off of other coupons. It’s all really starting to get to me.

I am not a shopper. I don’t have the time or the patience to meander the malls or boutiques just hoping to stumble on something I don’t really need but can’t live without. I go with a list of what I’m looking for after checking to see who might offer the best price, get what I came for and leave. Sure, I’ll browse and windowshop a bit, but I can’t spend hours doing so, nor do I have the time to go through all those ads or the space in my head to keep track of the zillions of special deals available for three hours next Tuesday.

But the sum effect of all those ads and promos this year is really beginning to wear on me. What if there really IS something in all that newsprint that might be just the thing for my daughter/sister/husband? Perhaps that electronic item IS within my budget if I’d only check every ad in print or online and found the right coupon or rebate offer to apply to it. Surely in that enormous mountain of paper piling up in my recycle bin there is SOMETHING I WILL REGRET MISSING OUT ON!!! Oh, the horror! Oh, the wasted opportunity! Oh, the ten dollars I might have saved!

I’m not sure my frazzled nerves and fragile psyche can handle any more. Perhaps I should let my husband sort through the paper and the mail each day and remove all those urgent messages of irresistible savings before I can see them. I’ll turn off the T.V. and radio and just zone out to holiday tunes and New Age harmonies. I’ll unsubscribe to and designate as “junk” all the online retailers who dare to tempt me via email. Then I’ll be safe . . . at least until all the after-Christmas sales.

— Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader