Spyware and Antivirus detection increase

All, This may not be the right audience but I do not know of a better set of experts to ask this question. We monitor antivirus and spyware activity very close on our desktop and laptop environment. Often you can correlate this activity with an increase in bandwidth. The bandwidth is not an issue but this month we see a very big spike in antivirus and spyware detection compared to last month, 12,000 detections last month compared to 38,000 so far this month. We have all the data and know what signatures are being tripped and a good idea of where they are coming from. The question I have is this, is anyone else seeing an increase and have any idea why? Is it just the time of the year with it being the holiday season?