Calling All Wise Men

Coming up with a new holiday feature idea each December is not an easy task, given that we've done Christmas what, about 2,000 times? I didn't have a clue.

So the female editors at Pacific Northwest got together and suggested a story on how the burden of the holiday falls disproportionately on one gender.

And they're right. Guys, this is for you.

No, we men don't handle Christmas. In any calendar year, guys are responsible for three key holidays: Super Bowl (when the only cooking utensils are a bottle opener and teeth to open chip bags), Fourth of July (when we have to blow things up) and Shark Week.

All the others fall to women in an eminently sensible sexual division of labor.

There are scriptural excuses for this (Eve picked the apple, Jesus turned water into wine), biological (women seem genetically programmed to remember relatives' names) and historical (we killed the mastodon, now it's their turn to cook it).

Most important, girls are trained from an early age to stress about orchestrating a perfect holiday to create indelible childhood memories based on ludicrously idealistic movies and glossy magazine pictures for an event that, by its very design, is doomed to disaster.

Boys are trained to realize, "Hey, there's always next year."

Meantime, let's go out and kill another mastodon.

Accordingly, women do carry the burden of Christmas. They find parking at the mall, buy the presents and food, send the cards, clean and decorate the house, scrub the children, get the Santa photo, set the table, watch the sappy movies, hustle everyone off to church, mediate the arguments between relatives, recycle the wrapping paper, quiet the tantrums, find the missing toy parts, and take everything back for exchange.

Men string the lights and wonder why it always takes so long to get breakfast and lunch on Dec. 25.

Fellows, it's time we did more than handle the remote control, although that is no small task these days. Accordingly, we offer suggestions to help you share the load.

Let's begin with a quiz. To accomplish Christmas, it's best to:

A. Vacuum before guests arrive.

B. Vacuum after they've left, since they've strewn crumbs and tinsel enough to qualify as invading Visigoths.

C. Vacuum both times!

D. Go back to Circuit City for different cabling to see if you can get the surround-sound to work on the home theater you bought for yourself on Dec. 10.

If you answered "D," you're a manly man and can proceed with this story.

First of all, Christmas is for kids, right? Which means that if you've reproduced — or are even distantly related to a rug rat — you finally have the perfect excuse to buy the Atomic Megadeath Rangers of Havoc War Maxi-Set you always wanted but your own girly-mom would never buy for you, thereby scarring you for life.

While you're at it, teach your nephews to make really cool explosion noises. This is something men can do better than women.

Other good-guy jobs include getting enough batteries from Radio Shack, using our vastly superior spatial skills to tackle the "some assembly required" part, setting up the model trains for deliberate derailments and head-on collisions, and taking the children to the multiplex while Mom cooks, where "by accident" you usher the brood into "Die Hard 4" instead of the Pixar animated feature.

One of your most important jobs is to show your love for the Woman Who Makes It All Happen by creeping up behind her while she's rolling out the pie dough, reaching out, and . . . Oops! Family newspaper. No, I mean, by buying her a present that demonstrates your thoughtfulness and sensitivity.

This means thinking about it early: Dec. 22, at least!

Your natural male instinct is to get her something useful: a new set of tires, uncomfortable lingerie, the cable premium package, a knife sharpener or a gift certificate to Outback Steakhouse.

Don't follow your gut. Think like a girl, which means buying something that's actually pretty useless. As a hint, try Nordstrom or Macy's, the Shane Company (because you have a friend in the diamond business) or Sunglass Hut. (I don't really mean that last one, but I just couldn't think of any other girl stores right off the bat.)

Women like soap, sparkly things, novels with pink on the cover, and cloth with decorative holes in it. Pink, clean, perforated fabric with sequins is just about perfect.

Translated, that means Sears, which at least has a pretty cool tool section and is a lot more comfortable for a guy to wander around in than Victoria's Secret. Except Sears is usually at the mall, and only a lunatic goes near one between Halloween and New Year's.

So go ahead to Home Depot — she might as well have that non-kinking garden hose you've had your eye on — but don't hesitate to stop at Fry's Electronics on the way, since you could buy yourself a way-cooler laptop or big-screen TV than any gift you're likely to get, and can then earn points by saying, "I don't really need anything, spend it on the kids."

A good gift fallback is perfume. Why? It's not really necessary (women smell better than us anyway), ridiculously expensive, and the salesgirls tend to be cute. Your pathetic inability to ever remember to buy the right brand and type will make you perversely endearing, in a clumsy Hugh Grant kind of way.

While stores will wrap stuff for you, that makes you a wuss, cowboy. Every crooked, wrinkled, heavily taped mess of a personally-wrapped gift will tell her how much you care. Just remember to forego the Simpsons wrap this time.

To minimize chaos on Christmas morning, it's a good idea to attach a name tag, since (being male) you won't remember what you bought, for whom, three days after you purchased it. Try to put something sentimental on the label, however, not just her name. For example, "Merry Christmas."

(Addendum: If the present is lame, you don't have to write down who it's from.)

There's more to Christmas than presents, however. There's candy, variety specials, repetitive music and Christmas trees.

It's pretty masculine to cut down a small tree, tie it onto your car top like some gut-shot buck deer, drag it into your living room to let it dry into a fire hazard, and work for two days to get the sap off your hands.

As the guy, you get to reach to put the angel on top of the tree, and you're the one who knows where the breaker box is when the fuse blows.

Her job: Hang the ornaments. Yours: Another round of hot-buttered rum.

And guys, if you want to Get Lucky on Christmas Eve, it helps if she's not already too exhausted. That means shouldering some of the cleaning chores, and you can't be too helpful here. Pretend to see dirt that women claim is there, even though our chromosomes make us unable to detect it. In other words, go through the motions.

Bathroom: Put the seat down, flush the toilet like you've cleaned something, and use Windex on the faucet. Done.

Sweeping: If you push it far enough under the furniture, the only ones who will get to it are the 8-month-olds.

Dusting: Focus on the TV. Then go rent "Goldfinger" or a Will Ferrell movie.

Garbage: Take it out, and tell her how dark and rainy it was. Explain how your weight is invaluable in squashing it all into the can.

Don't tell her you're "finished" cleaning, or she'll get suspicious and worried. Reassure that you're still "straightening."

But wait. Is this story even politically correct? What if you're not a Christian? Is there an ecumenical approach that promotes world peace? What is proper guy Christmas behavior if you celebrate Hannukah, Ramadan, Chinese New Year or a Scientology potluck with Tom and Katie Cruise?

Go to Hawaii.

OK, then. Back to Christmas.

Men, we can also do more about cooking. Help her plan.

Her question: Which dessert?

Correct answer: All of them.

While she will scowl and mutter, the resulting martyrdom will make her feel good about herself, and you'll be on a sugar high until the New Year bowl games.

Other good-guy cooking jobs include opening jars, putting nuts in a bowl, getting out a fresh stick of butter, unscrewing the wine cap and carving the meat. Try to put on a display with this last one, mentioning it would have been easier with a good knife sharpener, and implying you've pretty much overseen the entire feast.

Refrain, however, from saying that something is "almost as good as Mom's."

Refrain from asking, "Where's that good (fill in the blank) we had last year?"

And the Three Commandments:

• Don't eat more than half the olives.

• Drink no beer with turkey. (Until Dec. 26.)

• And even though it's sexy, don't ask her to stir gravy in high heels.

What we're talking about here is basic common sense, as if you're a New Age, sensitive type of guy. Or French. So let me put this in male terms. Remember how in "The Godfather" they had to go to the mattresses when the Mafia war broke out and the fat guy showed Michael Corleone how to make spaghetti sauce? That's what we're talking about. This is a holiday, soldier! There's no "I" in TEAM! So strap on your helmet, gird up your loins, and think:

It's the man who should say grace, thanking God for women.

It's the man who handles the camera, if you haven't lost it under all the torn wrapping. Your wife will help you identify the children afterward.

It's the man who should test-drive every electronic toy before letting a child have it, avoiding the risk of the kid breaking it first.

It's the man who has to have thirds, to show his appreciation.

It's the man who should look at the instruction manuals, since women won't read them in a million years.

It's the man who needs to nap, since he's expended all his energy killing mastodons, or doing his own gift-wrapping.

In fact, now that I think about it, our load is pretty staggering, and the entire premise of this story as set forth by my female editors — that women do most of the work at Christmas — is not entirely true.

Who has to eat the cookies and milk? The guy.

Who has to ponder why the string of outdoor lights isn't working before throwing it in the trash and heading back to Fred Meyer? The guy.

Who has to trounce his brother-in-law in a round of Grand Theft Auto 4 and turn up the Christmas music to drown out the screaming and gunfire? The guy.

Who has to surreptitiously study the paper's TV guide late on Christmas morning just in case there's a rerun of "The Magnificent Seven" the family won't want to miss? The guy.

Who is the individual this entire holiday is about? A guy. Like, duh.

Who was necessary to make the birth of baby Jesus even possible? A . . . No, wait. Hmmm. I'm confused. Really? All by herself?

Anyway, in the spirit of Christmas, we shouldn't be embarrassed to celebrate Guydom. Testosterone, pattern baldness, jock itch, flatulence. (Can you imagine being a girl and having to like us? Yikes.)

Sure, let's give a nod to the little ladies. Let's remember children get off on Christmas, too, budding little materialists that they are. Let's not forget that Christmas is about each other. Family. Memories. Hope. The Hallmark Company.

But it's also about calls to Customer Support, and guys are good at that. Unless we're put on hold, in which case the woman can listen to the background music for us while stirring more gravy in her high heels, while we set up the trains for a really cool head-on collision.

Because, hey, it's Christmas. Train wreck time!

William Dietrich is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff writer. Susan Jouflas is The Seattle Times assistant art director/features.