What Christmas means to me: Happy holidays and how would you like your mocha?

It starts about mid-October every year without fail. The entire staff is consulted, the date is set, and it is decided Christmas will arrive right on schedule this year.

I don't hate the holidays, far from it, I consider myself a sentimental individual, but something about Christmas time makes my skin crawl -- or maybe that's just the dried eggnog.

You see for the merry elves of Starbucks, Christmas comes Nov. 13, right on the dot. While many establishments tout Thanksgiving specials and Halloween mark-downs, under the green flag of the siren, we hurriedly hang mistletoe and spread merriment, a full two weeks before Advent even begins.

Indeed, I work for the company that capitalizes on Christmas so much that its success is the first order business at the annual stockholders' meeting.

For some individuals, the holidays mean family-togetherness, carols, unwanted fruitcake and partridges in pear trees. For me, they mean up-selling machines, overplayed Bing Crosby songs and cantankerous housewives drowning in bags of presents. Frankly, come Chanukah, "it's beginning to look a lot like a consumer wonderland" and enough to turn me into the Grinch in the green apron.

Whether you're a loyal addict or conscientious objector, you can't argue that Starbucks during the holidays doesn't mean business. Store designs are approved months in advance and, once unveiled, illuminate the atmosphere with a preternatural tacky tinsel glow.

Often the hordes that pour through what some are now calling the "the green arches," have only a faint idea of insanity that goes on behind the counter.

Budgets are met and missed. During flu season, scheduling becomes a comedy of errors, and oh yes, annual incentives engender sometimes not-so-merry rivalries between local stores. And you thought your barista's strained saccharine smile was merely a product of perfecting your no foam, no water, soy chai.

Despite the deafening squeals of steaming eggnog in my ears, the peppermint mocha in my hair and drone of "White Christmas" in my head, something that happened my first winter at Starbucks always gets me through.

It was several weeks before the actual holiday and I had already overdosed. Filling a shift at the Westlake Starbucks was plenty more than I had bargained for and after serving my 100th soccer mom of the day (tall decaf-nonfat-sugar-free-vanilla-latte, for non-baristas) taking a break in a small black box was starting to sound pleasurable.

Suddenly, the jingle bells slammed against the door and in walked a different breed of customer. Garishly out of place next to the business suits waiting for venti caramel macchiatos and the designer jeans waiting for grande mocha frappuccinos, his layers and tattered pants bespoke a free sample of drip coffee.

However, with amazing audacity he asked, "What's good here?"

Restraining myself, I almost uttered the horribly deceitful Starbucks' creed, "Everything."

Slowly, I offered the standard, "What do you like?"

"Chocolate," he answered with a cough and carefully placed on the counter some pocket-lint, a button, paperclip, and 1 dollar and 57 cents, all in small change.

As if by second sight I knew and went about the machine, stirring, mixing and pouring his holiday brew. He stood silent, observing the curious roaring machines, with their many spouts, steamers and gauges.

Quickly drizzling the final touches, I presented him a "venti-breve-extra-vanilla-mocha, apple tart, chocolate croissant and a chocolate medallion." Appearing suspicious and confused, he looked around as if it was someone else's order, but realizing he was a lone soul in a sea of nonfat and soy, he timidly approached the counter.

"Merry Christmas," I said, handing him back his 1 dollar and 57 cents, and for one of the first times that day actually meant it. Quickly he grabbed his order, like so many greedy little children I had served that day, only there was an innocence in his haste that set him apart from the sugar-crazed next generation of material consumers.

Working, as a Starbucks barista is a job I love to hate. I love the company, but with each passing year, between "partner shopping week" and "Boxing-Day markdowns," I find it harder to truly experience the holidays. Anyone in the retail business will tell you the same story.

But somewhere amid the crazed consumption of the Christmas season, there exist moments that seem plucked directly from Jimmy Stewart movies.

They are stories I don't tell at the stockholder meetings and rarely think of when running through a line of preteens screaming for nonfat-eggnog. But in the slower moments, demoing a machine or grinding beans, my mind drifts to the man with the mocha and to the ever-present sounds of Dean Martin's "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," and I think: Despite the long days, gingerbread lattes and red and green haze, there is nobility to my profession; it's merely serving others, one caramel apple cider at a time. And that's what Christmas means to me.