A free taste of a product offered for sale: Sample

A large warehouse-style retailer: Sam's Club

A free taste of a food item offered for sale at a warehouse store: Samsple

A free taste of a pork product offered for sale at a warehouse store: Hamsple

As soon as the sun goes down on Halloween night, the Christmas shopping season starts. Fun sized poor-value-per-ounce candies are consolidated in the front of the store to make way for the next gift buying opportunity.

All the store entrances have all their holiday bric-a-brac arranged into mini obstacle courses. It has become the Extreme Holiday Season. Decorations should stimulate, at a bare minimum, half of the five senses.

At Wal-Mart, a not quite life-sized Santa wiggles his pelvis and sings to me as soon as I enter his motion detector zone.

At Lowe's, Christmas trees of astronomical proportions and varying hues monopolize the high-dollar retail real estate at the front of the store, along with a dizzying array of angel tree toppers, right next to the can't-live-without ShopSmith 12-in-1 $2700 woodworking tool demonstration, where the salesman makes a wooden flower for the ladies. Don't forget the six foot tall nutcracker!

At Sam's Club, the revolving pre-wired artificial Christmas tree with built-in music was attracting some attention, as were the five foot tall wreaths. Sample ladies were offering up Eggnog, tins o' chocolate dipped cookies, and I found myself with a trio of brick-like fruitcake in my hand, that I did manage to resist.

Speaking of the multi-purpose holiday crap, don't forget the gifty items. These are things that you would never buy for yourself, such as:
1. Anything you would buy at a gift shop;
2. Anything from a crafts mall;
3. Prepackaged sets, such as biscotti in a ceramic jar labeled "biscotti";
4. Anything that will be stored in an attic eleven months of the year, i.e. reindeer socks.
5. Anything you think is "clever".

The worst thing is having to drag children through all the sensational holiday craptaculars when all you need is a tube of caulk.