Mariah Carey to work earlier and earlier. And every year Mariah, Queen of All Things Festive, must remind us that she is still has a few minutes left on her break and she'll let us know when we can throw off our cares, wrap a large Santa coat over our negligee, and start practicing the alto line from "All I Want for Christmas Is You."

The tenuous period before Festive Season, also known as Mariah Carey Season, is known as Not Yet Season, of which Mariah is also the ruler and sole copyright holder. People (me, I am people) try to start hollying and jollying and Mariah, ever the patient deity, always replies with a succinct but clear "not yet." This year, however, Not Yet Season has taken on a whole new meaning as we head into a week when we will furiously refresh our Twitter feeds all day every day to see if all the ballots have been counted and the election can be called. And for much of the week the answer will come to us on a whistle tone with the words we already know by heart: Not Yet.

I'll admit, I'm a bit of a Mariah Carey Season zealot, so I don't normally observe Not Yet Season. I began playing "All I Want for Christmas Is You" on the day after Labor Day, I voted early, and Trump has never been my president, so this upcoming week is a bit of a mystery to me. It's also particularly odd that an extended Not Yet Season is coming a few days after Daylight Savings Time ends. After you fall back an hour, the answer to the question "is it night right now?" is never Not Yet. So you can see my confusion! But I know who has the answer: Mariah Carey.

Here's the problem as I see it: there's a lot of concern that our election results won't be clear for a while. There's an even greater concern that members of the Republican Party will try to obfuscate the results of the election or throw out ballots that should be counted in an effort to win races they haven't. This is mostly a concern because members of the Republican Party are currently trying to obfuscate the results of the election and throw out ballots that should be counted in an effort to win races they fear they won't. So you can see how one would get the idea.

Media companies will be under pressure to call races on Election Night because we have strayed from the light of Not Yet Season and expect a quick tabulation of tens of millions of votes. Why do we believe this is reasonable when it takes a full week to find out who got sent home on Dancing with the Stars? Why are humans such paradoxical creatures? Why do people vote against their own interests? Why is a Republican congressional candidate trying to rip my ballot from my hands right now? You know who has the answers: Mariah Carey.

It has always been Mariah. In the dark winter of 2016, who gave us a New Year's Eve performance that encapsulated the energy we needed to get to 2017 and beyond? Mariah Carey. Who invented the phrase "I still believe"? Mariah Carey. Who, when presented with a totally deranged Supreme Court case aimed at enabling voter suppression said simply, "I can't read suddenly"? Chief Justice Mariah Carey.

Not Yet Season will not be over until Mariah Carey takes herself down to the New York Times building and breaks the New York Times election needle in half. Not Yet Season, as the ancient scrolls demand, will not release us from this Purgatory until Mariah Carey herself validates the results by singing "Hero" as she personally scans ballots.