This morning I awoke to the insistent pounding of harpsichords in my eardrums. The music on my clock radio seemed designed to propel me out of bed toward cards to be signed, bayberry-scented candles to be purchased and wreaths to be hung.

For once in my career, I’m spending December more like that of my mother and many of the women of her generation – on a focused, forward march toward Christmas.

This year marks a major transition in my life, a midpoint between the role I recently played as an associate editor for this newspaper’s editorial board and my new position, beginning in January as a member of Eastern Washington University’s journalism faculty. I hope to continue to contribute occasional columns to this space as well. For all the farewell sadness and joyful anticipation inherent in that change, it’s also given me a few extra hours of precious daylight to devote to preparing for the holiday season.

Most women I talk to know exactly what that means. Many men seem baffled.

This week the Wall Street Journal puzzled over why Sen. Hillary Clinton appears to be gaining stronger support among less affluent women than those who work as professionals and managers. The article mused that there could be several reasons: Executive women may prefer a more Republican tax structure or they may want to keep their feminist-solidarity instincts under the radar so as not to alienate important business contacts.

But I think the author might have missed the primary reason for women managers’ hesitation.

So far they’ve heard no word of Hillary Clinton’s platform on changing American culture to reflect the December priorities of the majority of U.S. women.

Who but a woman manager knows just what planning, organizing, delegating and execution must go into a project as large as the presentation of a traditional American family Christmas? And who might be more keenly aware that for all the changes in the makeup of this country’s work force, key elements of a woman’s biological and family life still aren’t reflected in the way their offices operate?

Corporate America long ago learned to roll with the drop in productivity that centers on high American holy days such as the World Series, the fantasy football season, and the Road to the Final Four. As moments of profound emotional and social connection for mainstream male workers, these events have been duly granted the reverence and time for observance they deserve in American life.

Merge all those big days together and you might have some approximation of the role Christmas plays in the emotional and social, not to mention spiritual, lives of most American women.

Yet all over the United States this month, corporate work life barrels along, with managers plowing through meeting after meeting, charging through budget sessions, flying key people halfway around the world for staff meetings, and otherwise complicating the lives of women desperately trying to get a long list of presents bought and wrapped, lasagnas baked and packages mailed between now and the 25th.

If having women executives climb to the top ranks of Fortune 500 companies hasn’t changed that reality, why would weary woman managers think Hillary Clinton would have any better luck?

So far, American women haven’t succeeded in shifting this country’s culture toward a recognition of women’s realities. If anything, workplaces have become less flexible and family-friendly in the last decade.

Would the first woman president finally make a significant change in that arena? Apparently many professional women doubt it.

But all is not lost. Just this week,I spotted a glimmer of hope. On ThursdI read that Congress will consider dropping its Depression-era tax on shoes. The Senate version of the bill is co-sponsored by Washington’s own Maria Cantwell.

Now if making the female-bonding experience of shoe shopping accessible to a greater cross-section of American women isn’t a shift in the priorities of this country’s gender-driven culture, I don’t know what is.

A new federal holiday, a designated Christmas shopping-wrapping-baking day, set aside like those now reserved for the watching of football and the exploding of fireworks, surely cannot be far off.