There are three things you can count on every year.

1. The Victoria's Secret Summer Clearance Catalogue.

2. The Victoria's Secret Winter Clearance Catalogue.

3. Christmas.

Usually in that order.

Of the three things that you can count on every year, numbers one and two are undoubtedly the most exciting. Every year millions of coffee tables, mailboxes, and bathrooms are delighted to find themselves housing these highly engaging periodicals. On a profound level, both the Victoria's Secret Summer Clearance Catalogue and the Victoria's Secret Winter Clearance Catalogue afford the savvy consumer excellent opportunities to procure a certain amount of sexy under-things for certain lucky ladies.

On a significantly less profound level, they're both great spank material.

The third thing you can count on every year is Christmas.

Christmas means warmth and love and peace. Christmas also means ornamented evergreen trees, spiked egg nog, and Tickle-Me-Elmo. Christmas also means letters to Santa begging his forgiveness for leaving him those cheap-ass Hydrox cookies your mother bought you and assured you would be fine, when everybody knows damn well from watching the commercials that Santa likes Oreos best.

Christmas means commerce.

Countless studies have shown that men are better drivers than women. Countless other studies have shown that retailers do roughly 98% of their business around the Christmas holiday. The other two percent tends to be fairly split between the release dates of both Victoria's Secret Clearance Catalogues.

Every December stores contentiously and consistently brace for an annual Christmas sales boom. By December merchants have both over-stocked and over-employed. Inevitably, when these retailers realize how much overhead they could have cut, they then over-dose.

A large part of this commercial Christmas involves getting the consumer in a jovial mood so that they don't mind dropping two hundred bucks on a Tickle-Me-Elmo doll on Ebay. To further ensure a happy mood among the majority of consumers, store personnel tend to outfit themselves in festive garb, while emotionally soothing Christmas albums, like "An Old Dirty Bastard Christmas," are played over the loudspeaker.

They also decorate the store.

This is the most annoying part of Christmas.

Especially when it happens the first week of November.

Like most Americans, I went to the mall earlier this week. Although most Americans went to the mall earlier this week to check the shelves for the Victoria's Secret Winter Clearance Catalogue, all I wanted was a metronome. And lunch.

Upon entering the mall, I had to pass a number of stores before I wound up at the music shop. I walked by Best Buy and then Radio Shack. Both had laminated reindeer and candy canes in the windows, along with plenty of red and green twinkling lights.

Then I fell into the Gap.

This was a mistake.

I entered the Gap with the best of intentions. I didn't really want to buy anything, I just wanted to see what kind of belts they were making these days. Then a clerk came up to me.

"Hi! How are you? Can I help you find anything?"

It has never ceased to amaze me how certain people can turn sentences of conversation into one giant exhalation. I read her name off her tag and replied quite cordially.

"Thanks, Sarah, I'm just looking."

Dark-eyed blonde Sarah smiled a big smile and then left me for the far more exciting task of sweater folding. After inspecting the belts I inspected the store. Tinsel streamed from window pane to window pane. It was even on the mannequins. There were white Christmas lights in the window. There were also laminated reindeer.

They were even playing "An Old Dirty Bastard Christmas."

I tried to inspect Sarah, but she started looking at me funny so I left.

I bought my metronome and headed to the food court.

On my way there I wondered why retailers need to get into the Christmas spirit so far in advance. I wondered why the need for lights and tinsel and Sarah in a red felt Santa hat is so commonplace. Christmas in July strikes me as a great marketing scheme. Christmas in November seems about as dumb as Corn Flakes. I don't like having Christmas forced upon me so early. I like asking Sarah out for spiked egg nog when I'm damn good and ready.

I can't think about peppermint sticks right now.

I'm still eating my Halloween candy.