Once you throw away the pesky black-and-white pages, Sunday newspapers are incredible things. Especially at this time of year. A stack of overdesigned, full-color circulars, thick enough to beat a dog with, covered in Christmas symbols? It's like I died, went to heaven, got three wishes and wasted one of them to become heaven's chief newspaper mogul on a dare from one of the other dead people. I'm about as well-read as a monkey, but I love Sunday newspapers during the holidays. They're rife with Rudolph, stuffed with snowmen, and other pleasant matching-consonant descriptors.

While the department store catalogs have a more practical purpose, I'm much more fond of pilfering through the coupon sections. Not because I'm looking to save fifty cents on popcorn, but because these sections rent out space to a number of mail-order companies who use our collective holiday madness against us, forcing us to consider buying random ceramic Santa Clauses and other keepsakes that hide their bloated retail prices behind monthly installment payment plans.

From today's paper, up above are my two favorite Christmas-related offerings. On the left, a series of storybooks where the lead characters are customized to be named after your child. I've always wondered if these books are made-to-order, or if the companies simply stockpile books with common names. I suppose I could pen "Walter The Ass" in on the "Your Child's Name" field of the order form, write the check, and get my answer. But then I'd have to get up to find a pen.

On the right...Kinoki Cleansing Detox Foot Pads! Under that, an opportunity to get a personalized letter from Santa Claus. I was going to compliment their fairly reasonable price of $2.95 per letter, until I noticed that they charge an additional dollar for postage. $3.95? In this economy?! Fuck that, I'll just write "To Matt From Santa" on a piece of paper and mail it to myself.

I don't know. These giant, treasure-laden Sunday newspapers just seem to gel with the idealism of how holiday weekends should be spent: Lazily, under blankets and drinking something hot.

A morning spent thumbing through pages of Christmas trees and Carvel ads gave me enough inspiration to turn our usual Sunday feast of pretzel rods into a mock Thanksgiving dinner, complete with stuffing that was nearing perfection until I managed to burn 80% of it, and one of those six-dollar supermarket rotisserie chickens that packs all the charm of a turkey, but without the subtle gamy aroma that sends me into fits of wanting to kill everyone.

And yeah, that's the holy trilogy of Christmas soda in the back. I like to have options. I've written about them before, but I kind of feel like I'll jinx them if I don't write about them every year. I don't want Pomegranate 7 Up to ever go away. So write about them I will. But not tonight. I'm too winded from writing those six sentences about the newspaper.

If you're impatient, a trip back in time! My reviews of... Pomegranate 7 Up, Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash and the Sierra Mist Cranberry Splash Slurpee!