Many people greet the arrival of Dec. 26 each year with a sigh of relief, grateful that they somehow survived another Yuletide season and expressing the obligatory disdain over “the commercialization of Christmas.”

Sudden thought: I wonder how many of them take time to attend a church service on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day as a counterbalance to the aforesaid commercialization.

I have never joined this Commercialization Chorus. For my entire life, my family has celebrated Christmas with the exchange of gifts with family and friends. If the merchant community enjoys prosperity — and a few more people are employed — as a result of this form of celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, I am not offended.

And yes, we do go to a Christmas Eve service. It is a tradition of long standing.

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Perhaps I am just a pushover, but if kids in costumes come by our house trick-or-treating on two or three nights around the end of October, I do not object.

Okay, when teenagers and young adults dressed in street clothes, not costumes, tag along with their younger brothers and sisters, paper bag in hand, I am less enthusiastic, but the aggravation is more than offset by the fun of seeing the little tykes in costume.

Many of them don’t say “trick or treat,” and probably don’t understand the origin of the event as a not too genteel form of intimidation.

But almost all say “thank you.”

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I am less philosophical toward the disruption of our lives brought on by the national political primaries.

The endless negative TV commercials are a blight on the political process, and that is not likely to change. Fortunately, as the election contests move closer to home — state, county, and city — the tone of the campaigns is more civil.

“Friends and neighbors” politics has a more genteel aura.

But if I am tolerant of negative TV commercials, I am less charitably disposed toward the recorded phone calls that are received several times a day in the weeks before the election.

Sure, we could get caller ID and screen out calls from people we do not know, but that is not our style.

The recorded messages, some of which begin with the command to stay on the line to hear another recorded message, are a nuisance. Others, without so much as a “By your leave,” demand to know who I plan to vote for. These cross the line.

I would not be offended by a courteous live caller who asked if I would be willing to say who I support, but “Press 1 for Mickey, Press 2 for Goofy, Press 3 for Dumbo,” is an affront to my right to a secret ballot.

It is one thing for a friend to call to solicit my support for his or her favorite candidate (though it seldom happens), and something altogether different to be ordered around by a recorded voice on a robo-dialer.

That form of misconduct is over, at least until the fall.

Good riddance.

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(S. L. Frisbie is retired. He remembers the days when candidates for president campaigned on slogans like “I Like Ike.”)