It’s that time of year again. Halloween has come and gone, so it’s time to bust out the ornaments and the awful music. Thanksgiving? What’s that? Corporations are spending millions of dollars to convince us to buy billions of dollars of crap, all in the name of whatever religious holiday they can appropriate. And if you try to fight this rampant capitalism, people call you things like “scrooge” and “grinch” and “get a job, hippie.” It’s almost like people want to go into debt to prove they haven’t forgotten their friends exist.

Well, we haven’t forgotten you exist, dear readers, and we’re going to prove it without dropping a dime. This is the 2011 Holiday Half-Issue, our gift to you.

We’ve got a new Thanksgiving-themed story, “Almost Every November,” from Eirik Gumeny; the delightful and uplifting “The Resurrection of Old Saint Nick,” from Samuel Snoek-Brown; “Chinese Take-Out,” from Stephen Schwegler, a mouth-watering, Christmas-flavored semi-sequel to “November;” and, from Laura Garrison, “The Long Happy New Year of Dora Wellington,” which is either about a Kwanzaa celebration that goes terribly wrong or the long happy New Year of Dora Wellington. You’ll have to read it to find out.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get in line at Walmart. I hear they’re selling a giant TV for slightly less than they normally do.

You can download the Holiday Half-Issue by clicking here, or read it online here.