It’s the “ing” season: shopping, wrapping, shipping, driving, receiving, thanking, etc. It’s also the Complexity Season. Actually, the season lasts all year, but the holidays seem to crank up the dial.

I’ve got this theory, and I’m interested in your opinion. Are we reaching the point at which the average brain cannot handle more complexity?

There was a time long ago when, if you became ill, you went to see “the doctor.” Not a specialist, but a generalist. Then, a single doctor could retain and grasp most everything known (however little) about illness and treatment. Likewise, in the past, if your car broke down, you went to “the mechanic,” who could fix any car.

But the worlds of medicine and cars became too complicated for one person to understand, so specialists emerged. Now, hundreds of medical specialties each tackle only a slice of the complete complexity of the human beast and brain. Cars vary massively by brand, model and type. Even within, say, a particular Honda dealership, your minivan problem better go to the Honda Odyssey specialist.

What about the generalist Average Joe, the person with home, job and perhaps family responsibilities? When things get complex, we can’t split ourselves up into specialties. We’ve got to manage each day, in spite of the details. And as complexity peaks during the holidays, with gifts to buy, guests to host, travel to orchestrate and time off to arrange, the capacity of this Average Joe’s brain seems limited.

I think of my grandfather, “Pop,” who spent summer evenings sitting in the back yard in his Adirondack chair swatting flies. During vacations in the Ozarks, he didn’t have e-mail to monitor.

Pop was worlds away from computers in the office, home and pocket; telephones in your pocket or ear with a bazillion programmable options; medical insurance choices requiring manuals to explain; school choices for kids best understood through personal counseling sessions; healthy-living advice that gets revised routinely; innumerable digital streams of infotainment; and IRA, SIMPLE IRA, Roth IRA, SEP IRA, Keogh and 401K.

Do you understand your cellular plan? Me neither.

Ever long for when kids simply went to the (one) school? Ever order the bacon cheeseburger because it’s easier than figuring out what’s considered healthy? Find appealing that scene in “American Graffiti” when the entire town tuned to the same radio station? Miss savings accounts?

Yankelovich, a market research firm, estimates that a city dweller in 1977 saw 2,000 ad messages daily, compared with 5,000 today. The magazine “REAL SIMPLE” is 400 pages of stuff to buy. What’s simple about that?

Sometimes I wonder, when I look at the explosion of technologies, information and choices, at what point does more complex become too complex? At what point will the Average Joe be unable to handle it all?

And what would be the consequences? Maybe they’ve arrived: Americans last year filled 227 million prescriptions for antidepressants.

So, for the next few weeks, as you endure shopping real and virtual stores, wrapping the umpteenth present, and shipping the next box (FedEx, USPS, UPS, priority or ground?), think of Henry David Thoreau, sitting in his cabin by Walden Pond, concerned with no more than the four necessities of life: food, shelter, clothing and fuel.

But don’t think too long. Ping! Six eCards from online retailers just arrived.