Could a Constitutional Amendment Save Christmas?

Chuckle #437 | January 12th, 2011
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I don’t care if you just gave birth to triplets or had your knee replaced, un-decorating the house after Christmas is still your job, simply because you are “woman”. (Don’t bother roaring.) And don’t waste your breath asking your family for help because you won’t get any. There is no such thing as equal rights when it comes to taking down the Christmas decorations.

And the sad thing is that we women have only ourselves to blame.

Do really think it was Cro-Magnon guy who brought the first pine branch into the cave and said, “Ooh, honey this smells good, let’s do this every year?” Nope, it was one of us gals, in what may arguably be the greatest gender betrayal of our evolution.

Think about it. When was the last time your husband came home all excited about the cute new ornament he bought? The correct answer is NEVER. So while I bitterly complain that my kids and husband are uncooperative (understatement intended), I take full responsibility for their un-decorating inertia.

You see, with 12 large boxes of holiday “stuff” to be packed-up, it’s no surprise that helping mom lacks the appeal of say, a two hour Facebook chat.

Sure we ladies get a little help BEFORE Christmas when the kids’ anticipation and excitement is at Kilimanjaro heights. Christmas is by far the biggest carrot out there. But after the Epiphany all we’ve got left is “stick” and anyone in the family who couldn’t get into the witness protection program has gone AWOL.

If I waited for my kids to help me put away the Christmas stuff, the bells and bows would stay up all year.

While my husband doesn’t necessarily help “un” decorate either, he will dutifully haul the 12 boxes back up into the attic after having just schlepped them down 4 weeks earlier. You might think this makes him a good guy. In reality he’s simply afraid to let me up into the attic in case I freak out upon seeing the stuff he’s shoved up there over the past 15 years.

Equal rights issues and hidden agendas aside, I have to give my sweet Jewish mate credit for his willingness to climb the rickety pull-down ladder year after year. I would make him a saint if I could, but as a woman I don’t have much pull with the Vatican.

To be honest, I don’t feel the need to go all Gloria Steinem about “un-decorating unfairness”. I totally buy into the idea that I am from Venus and that my husband is from Mars. You could call us “separate but equal”. My husband drinks scotch and does the heavy lifting while I carefully wrap and put the ornaments away. Weirdly enough, we’re both happy.

I can’t change the world order, genetics, or the nature of man. I “can’t stop Christmas from coming” (nor do I want to). And just between you and me, I don’t expect the Equal Rights Amendment to ever pass, in any form. But in a post Epiphany epiphany, I realized that there is one thing I can change in hopes of getting more help from the kids.

I can get rid of some unnecessary holiday “stuff”. If there’s less to put away, my kids might become more enthusiastic about lending a hand.

So this year I managed to get my 12 boxes down to 11; a small step in the right direction.

Next year I’ll try for 10.

If that fails, I have only two options left. Leave the holiday stuff up all year, or get a bigger stick.
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