‘Twas the night before Christmas….

….and some finally shopped.

Hey, why waste time looking when you can just make one quick swoop into the store and grab it all? I have a co-worker with that philosophy and I talked to a store associate who said the same thing, today. Both are men.

I expect that women also shop on the last day, but it won’t be the first time out for us if we do. Women have to shop earlier because we are expected to do more of the buying. We also do most of the planning and most of the cooking, decorating, and wrapping. I think that there are some men who do not realize how much time goes into each one of these activities. They nail up a couple of lights, have a beer and then wait till Dec. 24 to buy the 2 gifts they are required to buy. “What’s the big deal?” they ask.

But they enjoy the hospitality and the get-togethers. They certainly enjoy the cookies and the food and whether they think about it or not, they enjoy the ambience of the music and the clean, decorated home. They enjoy when it’s not frustrating to get to the table and the chairs, which means that someone put time into thinking through how many people were coming and where everyone would eat. (Now, don’t leave yet – you’ll be surprised where this is going.)

To those who don’t “do” it, which includes all of us when we were children as well, it all, well, happens. Not magically, but still, it happens.

It’s likely that if the men knew how many hours of work went into everything, a number of things would be cut back. They’d throw on a hunk of meat and baked potatoes and eat ice cream out of regular bowls, squirted lavishly with whipped cream and washed down with a brew. They’d call some friends (or their brother) and say, “come on over tonight or tomorrow night” and they’d hand their buddy a new tool if they felt like it. No sweat.

Now, you thought I was going to complain that women were doing most of the work. But to some degree at least, we are doing all of the “make work” that we decided was part of the holidays, that we think is necessary to make it nicer, even though some women frazzle themselves past liking more than about 3 hours of Christmas when all is said and done because they are busy busy busy and tired of it.

I wonder how “Christmas” would change if we left the men in charge? The big question is: would we really “miss” anything or would we end up more relaxed? Comments?