HOW to write this without using the dreaded word? That could be a challenge. If my maths is right, and that would be a first, there are only 61 days to go until the day I'd rather not name, if it's all right by you.

At this time of year, with summer collapsing into autumn and winter still a chill away, there is little escaping the period without a name (at least for as long as I can avoid using it).

There is a tradition of spotting the first ridiculously early signs of the December do. The first shop display, the first decorations. So here's my contribution: the first moaning column.

First, a word about my mother who, at seventy-whatever-it-is, is leaving the country in November and not returning until February. How clever is that? Three months away with the big day tucked right into the middle. What supreme planning, what a brilliant piece of tinsel avoidance - except that she is anxious, never before having been away for the period in question.

The reason for raising this subject was the discovery of a website called www.casc.webalias.com, which was set up earlier this year by Edward J Addis, who lives at Cheltenham in Gloucestershire.

Mr Addis wrote to a national newspaper this week and mentioned his website which campaigns against "the ridiculously early onset of" those two days which are not being named by me.

I am with Mr Addis on this. I don't have anything at all against the decorations, the trees, the presents or the alcoholic overindulgence. It's the early onset bit that depresses the hell out of me. So that's why you won't find me referring to the annual festival by name, or at least not until December 1 at the earliest - and even that is on the pushy side of premature.

Mr Addis's website is not all singing and dancing, more all humming and shuffling, but it gets across the point, condemning overkill, shockingly early advance notice, and that strongest modern tradition, the seasonal outbreak of rampant commercialism.

Instead, we should be modest in what we buy and enjoy spending time with our families and loved ones, according to Mr Addis. The holiday should be low-key as it used to be, which is fine in theory, although nothing seems to be low-key these days. What is the opposite of low-key: high-key... turbo-charged key with alloy knobs on? Whatever it is, that is what we will get, unless me and the man from Cheltenham in Gloucestershire manage to change the world, which seems unlikely.

Mr Addis has a petition on his website which you can sign. I didn't because, well, I don't generally, but it is there for anyone who would like to register their grumpiness.

As for Mr Addis's campaign, a shorter one would certainly be a better one - and more enjoyable too.

There, I did it - no mention of the C-word.

GEORGE W Bush has a hotline to God, who said to him: "'George, go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me, 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did."

These remarks are reported in a BBC documentary to be shown later this month. A White House spokesman denied the President ever said such a thing, but the words have the terrifying ring of truth to me.

Two years ago, the Christian author Stephen Mansfield published a book called The Faith Of George W Bush. In it, he quoted Bush as saying before his presidency: "I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it but I sense my country is going to need me... God wants me to do it."

Does God have too much time on his hands?

And couldn't He find someone else to talk to - someone, well, a little less dangerous?

So this is how it goes. The world's most powerful man acts on the voices he hears in his head. Does anyone know the way out of here?

Updated: 08:53 Thursday, October 13, 2005