If anyone gave you a gift card this Christmas, leave work immediately -- tell the boss you have rabies! Herpes! Anything -- get yourself to that shop and use the card immediately. Even if you have to buy something at random -- underpants, M&Ms -- you must rid yourself of that plastic thing at once.

Remember what happened when Sharper Image went belly-up last February? There was that little matter of $25 million worth of gift cards the company simply refused to honor.

Now, with so many stores teetering on the brink, with even behemoths like Saks Fifth Avenue slashing prices to Kmart levels, there's no telling who will be bankrupt next year, next week, even tomorrow! And then you know what you can do with your gift card? Put it with those statements you got last month from Madoff Securities International LLC.

Is it the Grinch? Is it Scrooge? No, it's Wal-Mart! Once again, that venal venue is in the news, this time for showing good citizen Barry Goldberg the door when he attempted to distribute $1300 worth of $10 Wal-Mart gift cards in a Santa-like gesture at a Wal-Mart Supercenter in Connecticut last weekend.

Here's the store's rationale for tossing Goldberg: "While we appreciate the customer's patronage, we understand that he was interrupting the flow of foot traffic in the store's vestibule."

Excuse me? NOW you're worried about your vestibule, after a guy was trampled to death in the vestibule of your Valley Stream store on Black Friday?

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Well, it'll be a merry Christmas for at least one merchant: Ramazan Baydan, a shoe manufacturer in Istanbul, Turkey, says he recognized one of his shoes as the infamous Oxford hurled at President Bush in Iraq last week. That undistinguished clodhopper is now a must-have hot item in the Mid-East -- in fact, orders are pouring in from all over the world.

But clunky shoes are not the only quirky accessory that may prove to be an unexpected goldmine this holiday season: Want to sport that rich, silky 'do favored by disgraced Illinois Governor Blagojevich? Then you need to purchase his indispensable Paul Mitchell hairbrush, the grooming tool the Guv calls the "the football," a reference to the "nuclear football," or the bomb codes that are never supposed to be out of reach of a president.

Or as Rudyard Kipling once put it, "I'm never, ever without my XX*&# Paul Mitchell, it always keeps my X$%#&@ coiffure 'just so.'"

Waaah! All I wanted for Christmas was a tote bag printed with a nude photo of the first lady of France, and now I'm not gonna get one!

It seems that the Pardon purse company was doing a fine business selling totes emblazoned with Carla Bruni Sarkozi's splendid unclothed physique and a speech bubble that read: "My boyfriend should have bought me Pardon," until Madame sued the handbag people for violating her "image ownership rights."

Carla won, and the bag company now has to pay a 40,000 euro fine, which will reportedly be donated to charity.

But good news, Pardon is appealing! If they win, what's next? Michelle in the altogether with a bubble reading, "My husband would never have anything to do with anyone, ever, ever buying a senate seat?"

Britain's Queen Elizabeth has decided to turn off the lights in unused Buckingham Palace rooms, re-serve morsels left over from lavish banquets, and repeat a dowdy outfit now and again.

Nice try Queeenie, and we're glad you're keeping up with the news and all, but how about adding these thrifty measures:

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Sure we deplore violence as much as the next guy, but that doesn't mean we could entirely suppress a smile when an Iraqui reporter threw not one but two of his shoes at President Bush's press conference and shouted, "This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!" during his surprise visit to Baghdad yesterday. I mean, how many times have you wanted to hurl something other than invective at your TV when W. starts fulminating?

The whole incidence got us thinking about other great moments in footwear:More >>

We've long been of two minds regarding the Reverend Billy -- is he a self-promoting shyster or a genuine visionary? A craven scam artist or a breilliant performance artist? Last winter we did have a delightful time shopping with him in the East Village -- he's a guy who's very hard not to like in person -- and this season, what with the spectacular downturn in the economy, his message of "Stop Shopping! "(which we hate) seems, alas, more prescient than ever.

Which is to say: Instead of going to department stores on Sunday, you might consider joining Billy and his 40-voice Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, who, according to an email missive, "Will fill your heart with holiday buylessness," at Dixon Place. Hear their new hit single: "Not A Lotta Shoppin' Goin' On!'"

The event is in honor of Jdimytai Damour, who was trampled to death on Black Friday at Wal-Mart.

You can be the most important, influential woman in the entertainment universe, you can help elect a home-town guy to the presidency, but, unlike your male cohorts, when it comes to celebrating this triumph at the inaugural ball you face a hideous dilemma:

"I had a dress on the vision board," Oprah Winfrey confesses, "but I'm not sure that's going to fit. So I have to work on something else." She adds mournfully, "I definitely wasn't setting an example. I was talking the talk, but I wasn't walking the walk. And that was very disappointing to me."

A big guy can just wear a big tux (and he should follow Barack's example and get a union-made Hart Schaffner Marx number for under a thou) but a woman who, like Oprah, has gained 40 pounds (and those of us who live with Winfrey in yo-yo diet land know just how easy this can be) has to deal with the sartorial consequences.

To which we say -- Oprah darling, do not let this ruin your evening! Swath yourself in yards of black satin, have a ball at the ball, and then, like the rest of America, greet the new era by knocking off a few measly pounds.

Of course you're not shopping at all right now, no one is, but if you were it shouldn't be at Wal-Mart, where death has been stalking the grim aisles this holiday season -- and not just when crowds notoriously trampled a man to death on Black Friday (which is called that because it's the day retailers' books reportedly turn from red to black each year, not because a morning of innocent shopping is supposed to end in a funeral).

Now comes word that an alleged shoplifter at a Florida Wal-Mart with $393 worth of merchandise died in the store's parking lot last week after a struggle with three Wal-Mart workers.

Three things to do every morning: 1. Turn on Fox Business News, channel 43, to watch the stinking, sinking DOW (I know, I know, FOX is hateful, but they broadcast the bailout hearings live while CNN and MSNBC keep cutting away for stories about cute cats and car crashes);

2. Read Page Six online so you don't have to give Rupert Murdoch fifty cents; and

3. Call up theshophound.com for the very best reportage (except for my column, that is) on the Manhattan retail scene. Sure, it's 99 percent bad news these days, but there's an occasional diamond among the ashes, like the announcement that Housing Works in having a special sale of vintage Yves Saint Laurent fashion on December 11th.

Thanks, fellow hounds!