Road Apples
Nov. 30, 2009


 Christmas shopping and the surprise element

By Tim Sanders

If you are either male or female, and chances are you’re one or the other, then you should know by now that for men, Christmas shopping is completely different than it is for women. Here’s what I mean.


WOMEN - For women, shopping is a chromosomal thing. It has to do with DNA and dangerous hormones and other very scientific things which have percolated in the feminine body since primeval times. It involves the herding instinct, which naturalists have observed on that day after Thanksgiving known as Black Friday, when vast, ruminating herds of females all migrate as with a single mind to shopping malls to forage. It involves the need to browse, and the innate desire to shop competitively. A woman’s head is built to swivel a full 180 degrees in either direction, like an owl’s. This adaptation allows your wife to walk down a store aisle and look at all of the bright, shiny objects on both sides of her cart with minimum effort. Her eyes are also fitted by nature with very strong lenses, which allow her to read the tiny print on labels at a distance of several hundred yards.


MEN - Men have DNA and hormones too, but their mixture has given them a natural fear of stores and browsing. To your average man, who has no herding instinct at all (unless you count lodge members), the store shelves are simply imposing structures guarded by predatory sales persons who follow him around, looking for signs of weakness. We men are blind as moles when it comes to reading labels, and lacking the head swivel adaptation, we seldom notice objects not directly in front of us. For these and other reasons, men do not go Christmas Shopping, they go Christmas Purchasing. They scurry to the store, purchase a single item, and scurry back to their mole holes.

Because of their natural shopping advantages, women are always in a shopping mode. It comes as easily to them as breathing. They can shop using catalogs, the Internet, the television, the telephone, and while sorting through coupons which come in the mail. They can shop while bathing, cooking, chatting with friends, or driving. I suspect your average woman could shop while having her appendix removed. It is very scary, but it helps explain how it is that they can shop for Christmas gifts all year long. That is why their husbands are often shocked when, due to a serious miscalculation, they find themselves accompanying their wives through a store aisle somewhere and the following conversation occurs:
WIFE (after violent head swivel): Oh, look, wouldn’t that be a perfect gift for Aunt Doreen?
HUSBAND: You mean the elderly gentleman with the dog and the cane?
WIFE: Of course not! I mean that adorable little wooden monkey on the stick. She collects wooden monkeys, you know.

HUSBAND: You’re a bit late. Christmas was last week. Even your Aunt Doreen knows that.
WIFE: It would be for next Christmas, silly!


The husband, of course, recognizes the folly of year-round Christmas shopping. Being a logical creature, he knows full well that fashions change, and Aunt Doreen could swap her obsession for wooden monkeys for an obsession for wooden chickens during the summer. Or worse, she might pass away before next Christmas, and then he and his wife would be stuck with an ugly wooden monkey staring at them from the umbrella stand. And the dog would probably get hold of that wooden monkey, chew the paint off of it, and get deathly sick all over the living room carpet. The husband knows that something bad is bound to happen if you buy Christmas presents early. But he can’t explain any of this to his wife, because her shopping chromosome is operating on automatic pilot, and has Aunt Doreen’s wooden monkey in its crosshairs. Her husband’s not even on her radar screen.

When it comes to shopping for your wife, here are some practical things I’ve learned over the years as a Shopping-Impaired male:


1. Never buy clothing for your wife. When we were first married, I bought my wife a very attractive dress for Christmas. She said she’d wear it sometime, on a very special occasion. As it turned out, that special occasion was destined to be when Hell froze over. She didn’t like the size, the color, or the wildlife pattern, which incorporated the popular ducks-in-flight motif.

2. The same goes for underwear. You can’t win with underwear. Sexy underwear sends the message that you are unhappy with her current stock, and BY THE WAY WHY HAVE YOU BEEN READING THAT VICTORIA’S SECRET CATALOG ANYWAY? Larger, bloomer-type underwear sends the message that she’s over the hill, and just a year or two away from Depends.

3. Practical Christmas presents, like blenders, toasters, or 64-piece socket sets also tend to send the wrong message.

4. At times over the years, Marilyn would leave open catalogs lying around. She would circle an item on page 342, and print, very neatly, “REEEEALLY LOVE THIS!” But when a guy is sitting on the commode, the last thing he wants to look at is the women’s jewelry section of a catalog, so the hints were seldom effective.

5. For a while she even used the tactic of giving me a list of items from which to choose. That way whatever gift I chose would be appropriate, but still a surprise, sort of. Of course, she was never specific enough, so the surprise was usually unsatisfactory.
6. All of which adds up to the realization, which will hit most husbands just about the time Alzheimer’s kicks in, that SURPRISE GIFTS ARE BAD IDEAS when your wife is the surprisee.


Which is not to say I don’t get my wife surprise gifts anymore. I do. The surprise part is when she comes home from Christmas Shopping and says to me, “Would you like to see what you got me for Christmas?” I say yes, and am invariably surprised when she shows me that blouse or sweater or piece of jewelry.
I am surprised by the gift, as well as by how much my taste has improved.