With the holiday season fast approaching, Newspaper Enterprise Association is offering its annual NEA holiday comic strip.

Created by “Frazz” cartoonist Jef Mallett, this year’s series is titled “A Mall and the Right Visitor,” which was first offered as the holiday strip in 2003 and is back by popular demand. Structured as an operatic, rhyming poem, the strip tells the story of grumpy elementary schoolteacher Mrs. Olsen, who works as a department store Santa so she can save enough money for a trip to Las Vegas.

As Mrs. Olsen listens to child after child’s greedy Christmas wishes, Frazz — the school janitor title character of Mallett’s comic strip — acts as a chorus attempting to make the children, as well as their teacher, realize the true spirit of the season. And the sincere wish of one little girl brings it all into focus.

“A Mall and the Right Visitor” runs Monday through Saturday for three weeks, starting Dec. 6 and culminating on Christmas Day, Dec. 25. The annual Christmas strip is provided in color and black-and-white to NEA’s 600 clients and is also available for individual sales. The strips will be available beginning Nov. 8.

Additionally, the holiday strip will also appear online at www.comics.com/neaholiday beginning Dec. 6.

NEA, a division of United Media, has offered a special Christmas comic strip as part of its service every year since 1937.