Obviously
if I were going to write another book, I couldn’t use the title
….”Women are from Venus and Men are from Mars” since that was used
some years ago. I guess I could do one titled something like…”Men
are from here and Women are from somewhere else”. The general
idea for a book of this nature is to point out another of the more
obvious differences in the thinking between men and women in
regards to Christmas shopping. I was working on a article about
the differences in mentalities of men and women on their approach
to wrapping gifts, but a nationally syndicated writer beat me to
the punch so that piece went into the trash and forced me to start
over. All over the country at this time of the year, women are
rushing into commercial centers, which are called…’malls’. This
word is curious to me since it is obviously a derivative of the
word…’maul’ which is a more accurate description of what actually
happens in these places.
Anyway, let us look at what I consider the
main difference between Christmas thinking for men and Christmas
thinking for women. Now, I would like to take you back to home
interiors in the 17th and 18th century. In
all of the paintings we have seen, you will notice that over the
fireplaces were manly objects such as swords, shields or hunting
rifles. These are what I call utilitarian objects. Men actually
used these things for something. These are things that men bought
or acquired in order to survive. Now sometimes in the 19th
century some huge social event must have occurred since we now
hang paintings of bunnies and tulips over the mantel. Men tend to
buy things that can be put to use. Things like tractors, fishing
tackle, hammers, and power tools. It appears to me that women tend
to buy things that do not have much use other than for decoration.
These things tend to be called knick-knacks or whatnots. They also
tend to collect dust. Go back to my comments about those old
castles hundreds of years ago, do you recall seeing any little
bowls of potpourri, dried flower arrangements or little porcelain
statues of angels sitting around? Of course not. These people were
serious about trying to defend themselves against the Huns, Goths
or traveling book salesmen. They did not have the luxury of
decorating with a lot of unnecessary stuff. This kind of leads
into my point about the difference between men and women at this
time of the year. Men think nothing about buying someone a skill
saw and wrapping it in butcher paper. Women would rather cut off
their arms than do something as barbarian as this. They will
travel over entire cities for days, driving hundreds of miles,
leaving no stone unturned just to find just the right Christmas
sweater to give to someone who already has 14 Christmas sweaters.
Nearly every woman in this country could
start wearing Christmas stuff at the end of October without
wearing anything twice and would probably make it all the way
through New Year before their Christmas wardrobe would be
depleted. Women start shopping for Christmas just after July 4.
Men start about 5pm on December 24th. Men use a
technique passed down through the ages known as power shopping.
They have no problem buying gifts for 35 people in less than an
hour. Women can easily spend an entire day without buying
anything. This habit drives men crazy and is probably partially
responsible for the fact that women tend to outlive men. Women
have absolutely no problem shopping for an entire week to find
that ‘right something’.
Men do not even know what that ‘right
something’ looks like. The other thing that drives men to want to
go off and live in a monastery is the fascination that women have
towards ribbons and bows. I did a survey and found that there has
not been a bow or piece of ribbon placed into a landfill since
this country began. Now, this does not mean that bows and ribbons
are used repeatedly; they just are not ever thrown away. Every
household in this country has bags of Christmas wrapping stored in
their attics. These bags just pile up year after year since no
woman has ever thrown any bow or ribbon away on purpose. I have it
on good authority that this practice started when the three wise
men brought gifts to the baby Jesus. Tradition tells us that it
was Mary, who first made the remark ..”Save those bows and
ribbons, we can use them next year.” I am sure those are still in
some attic, somewhere near Bethlehem.
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