I shop for books, usually used books, at church sales, Amazon or Edward McKay, but a yen to do the weekend crossword drove me to visit the local Barnes and Noble where a mildly ignoble holiday scam was in progress. I realize this should come as no surprise. Long ago Daniel Boorstin popularized the notion that in our secular hyper-capitalist age even the most solemn, sober, religious or patriotic holidays have been turned into “festivals of consumption.”

An orgy of excessive buying, almost always on ruinous credit, now begins before Halloween and extends well into January. It is almost shaming to recall that the central event ostensibly being celebrated is not the arrival of Santa laden with loot, but the birth of an impoverished, manual laborer and moral teacher who suggested kindness, humility and meekness were to be preferred to greed, hunger for power and self-aggrandizement. The one-percenter was not headed for heaven. You could look it up.

Well, that’s no fun, so we are all enjoined to buy, buy, buy. But just in case someone, somewhere retains a vestigial recall of the meaning of Christmas, wily merchants will find a way to cash in. Which brings me back to Barnes and Noble. As I was paying for my paper I was asked by the salesperson, as she had been trained to do, if I’d like to contribute a book to children in need.

Since I began my unprofitable addiction to the printed word at an early age, by being read to and then constantly having a book in my hand and in front of my myopic eyes, I was obviously not immune to such a holiday promotion. It seemed on the surface similar to requests at the grocery checkout to add a buck to the bill to combat some horrifying disease. But this case was different, as we shall see.

Initially wary, but also aware of impatient shoppers in line behind me, I asked who would actually receive any book I donated and was told that they would go to local children in need. I was then offered a stack of five or six titles next to the register to choose from, and in a moment of weakness I fell for the pitch. Perhaps, I thought, one child will be distracted briefly from a life of online illiteracy. Good deed accomplished.

Too late I realized I had failed to ask the obvious questions. They had my money and a child would allegedly get a book. But as I was picking up my paper, it did occur to me, belatedly, to ask what Barnes and Noble was doing to help this noble cause. Befuddled, the salesgirl said the store was passing on all the books to do-gooder organizations to distribute in time for Christmas.

But I persisted. Is the company also contributing anything? After all, I had paid the full cover price for the donated book. Was Barnes and Noble matching my gift? Was it throwing in come books itself? Or was it just playing on seasonal guilt and exuberance to get shoppers to buy more books than they had intended to, under the guise of charity? In which case that sound of silver bells was from the cash register, not another angel getting its wings.

Call me a cynic, but that looks to be precisely the nature of the con. When Harris Teeter asks if I want to give a buck to fight breast cancer or multiple sclerosis or shin splints it doesn’t take my dollar and give the charity a dollar’s worth of rutabaga. It passes on the cash. But the Barnes and Noble “charitable” program allows customers to buy its overpriced books and then talks them into buying some extra books at full price, for poor kids who can’t afford them. Thus, Barnes and Noble’s Christmas will be very merry. Ho, ho, ho, do-gooders, you’ve done more for the corporation’s bottom-line than for the kids.

A glance at the corporate website suggests I am correct. The business brags about its annual book donation drive, but says nothing whatsoever about any corporate contribution. Rather it praises its sales force and customers for their generosity, as well it might. “Our stellar booksellers and generous customers are the driving force behind millions of donations that make their way into grateful hands. Last year, Barnes & Noble donated nearly 1.5 million books to more than 650 local charities across the country that provide services to disadvantaged children.” No, it didn’t. It’s customers did the donating and Barnes and Noble booked the revenue.

In retrospect I also noticed that I was offered a stack of a few books from which to make my charitable choice. Could it be that the books being offered to the kind-hearted were selling poorly, books that no kids have actually been interested in reading? If so, Barnes and Noble has learned that charity really does begin at home, and has given itself a gift that pays off in two ways. First, it gets me to buy a book I wouldn’t have bought otherwise. Second, it gets to clear the deadwood from the shelves. Instead of sending excess inventory back to the publisher to be mulched or remaindered, the company has devised a scheme to guilt-trip holiday suckers into buying unwanted books to be provided as unwanted gifts to deserving waifs.

If Scrooge had been a better businessman, he’d have figured out something like this. Then, he would never again have said “Bah, Humbug” when Christmas rolled around. Instead, he would have persuaded everyone in London to invest a quid in the trust fund he’d set up to manage (for a fee) for the benefit of Tiny Tim. God bless us everyone.