Quite by accident, we found ourselves at the Aventura Mall yesterday just north of Miami. Wedged between the yacht-ridden Intracoastal Waterway and the Turnberry Isle Resort and Golf Club, it is a vast citadel of shopping, a gilded pimple on the ass of debt-laden America. Exactly the kind of mall experience we were glad to leave behind by moving to Gotham.

Of course, the 3-year-old Dalia loved it. Particularly because Christmas has come early to the mall. Santa was there hearing kids’ Christmas wishes near the entrance to Bloomingdale’s. A kiddie train in another part of the mall ran through a fluffy white landscape filled with animatronic bears and chipmunks. JC Penney Court had a $400,000 model train mountain that transfixed me her for a half-hour.

Dalia couldn’t have been happier if a coterie of fricking elves had personally taken her to the North Pole.

Yes, we live in Manhattan–home to the Rockefeller tree, the Miracle on 34th St., and, for a few hours a couple times each winter, white snow–but the New York Christmas experience can be almost too real. Lugging a stroller on the subway, dealing with the howling wind canyon that is 6th Avenue, and squeezing past the pudgy hordes of tourists from America’s stollenbasket. Here, in the mall, it was so easy. Just walk another 100 meters–with a frozen yogurt break on the way–from one attraction to the next.

No, Dalia didn’t want to talk to Santa. And her younger brother wouldn’t even look at the dude, as if he could make him go away just by averting his eyes.

But my relief at such an easily won Christmas experience, even an artificial one, is a sign that despite my better instincts, I’ve succumbed a bit to Christmas pressure. Apparently that’s the same force that makes New Zealanders beat their wives during the holidays, so I suppose we’re ahead of the game if a wasted afternoon at the mall is the worst thing that happens to us.

Of course, there’s still two weeks left before Christmas.