Ben Bromley channels his inner Scrooge:

A lot of people are turned off by mawkish attempts to sentimentalize Christmas, and as such attempts multiply, so does the legion of people suffering from the “Noel nasties.” …

It all started when I heard “The Christmas Shoes” on the radio and posted on Facebook that I feared my abhorrence of the song might signal that I’m dead inside. Turns out many of us have hearts two sizes too small.

“You’re not dead inside,” wrote my friend Bridget. “You just don’t like maudlin attempts at emotional manipulation.”

I felt better immediately, and wondered whether my impulse to smash all Precious Moments figurines is OK, too.

“That song is way too schmaltzy,” Jessica added, “and I’d be worried if you DID like it.”

Some expressed support for the song, saying it tugs at their heart strings. In it, the narrator recounts an experience in a checkout aisle Christmas Eve, where he finds a boy wishing to buy an expensive pair of shoes for his terminally ill mother. The boy explains he wants his mother to appear presentable before Jesus, but can’t afford the shoes. The narrator picks up the tab and wells up with Christmas spirit.

“A little kid who wants to help his dying mom look pretty when she passes away: How does that NOT make you a little sad?” Marianne asked.

I’d like to think Jesus is more interested in our souls than our soles. And I can’t help but wonder whether the song — and the movie it spawned — are a marketing ploy by the nation’s shoe makers. Unless my friends represent an unusually angry subset of the population, I’m guessing many around the country find the song’s storyline abominable.

Bridget pointed out that the narrator makes the situation all about himself: “Oh, I was having a lousy day but then I helped this sad little urchin and I feel better now. Go me.” …

The skeptical Aimee agrees with me that the song is a ploy, but not for the shoe companies. “The song becomes a lot more tolerable when you realize that clearly the kid is a con artist scamming this guy into supporting his cross-dressing habit,” she wrote. “I mean really, what kind of people let their kid run around the mall alone and unsupervised while his mother is in the hospital dying? Clearly this kid has his own agenda and the narrator has just been duped.”

Now THAT’s the kind of holiday storyline those of us who love “Bad Santa” could get behind. Let us watch in amazement as our hero takes the holiday’s power to turn everyone into gullible saps and uses it for nefarious purposes.

One of the Facebook comment Scrooge — I mean, Ben — didn’t include, probably because it wasn’t very funny, was my observation that journalists are supposed to be dead inside. The old saw from an editor is that if your mother says she loves you, check it out.

One reason why I’m not a fan of Christmas media is that there isn’t very much quality Christmas entertainment anymore. Off such classics as the original “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” (written by Dr. Seuss, animated by Chuck Jones, narrated by Boris Karloff) and the more recent “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” and “A Christmas Story,” and this playlist of Christmas music, I could do without any other Christmas entertainment, particularly Christmas songs sung by contemporary artists of dubious talent recording solely to make money because consumers of dubious taste will buy anything they record.

The other, of course, is that I hate winter.