The holidays are here again, and throughout the land families are getting ready for the fun. The average mom is working day and night, addressing the cards, planning the merry-making and doing everything in her power to make sure that this Christmas will be the best ever. The average child is erupting in a sustained explosion of anticipatory excitement like a little bottle-rocket in matching mittens and stocking cap.

And the average husband is curled up somewhere in a fetal position, sucking his thumb and counting the minutes until the specter of Christmas shopping has passed.

Yes, this may come as a shock to many of my female readers, but you see, men really aren’t all that good at shopping. You see, women seem to find an endless source of joy in spending nine or ten straight hours going from store to store in search of just the right shade of black pants. An experience like that would have just about any guy spending the next 20 years waking up in cold sweats and screaming for the mercy of a quick check-out. In fact, there are now support groups available for the uniquely male victims of what has come to be known as Post-Traumatic Shopping Disorder.

Ladies, there are several reasons you should learn not to expect much from your man in the way of Christmas shopping. First, by your standards a man is as color-blind as a beagle. If you say, “I’d like a blue sweater,” we will simply go out and buy you a sweater that is blue.

Now, you will probably be amazed to learn that a man can not grasp the absurdity of doing that. And you should know that on Christmas morning when you patiently explain to us, “It’s really nice, but I need robin’s egg to go with that mocha skirt your sister gave me, and this is actually more of a periwinkle,” as far as your man is concerned you might as well be speaking Swahili.

Second, our concept of how clothing should fit is very different from yours. To most men, if a Large is comfortable, it just stands to reason that an Extra-Large will be Extra-Comfortable. This is apparently not quite how women look at it. A woman’s main priority when it comes to clothing size is to have the smallest number printed on the tag while still being able to stuff her body into said clothing without either risking a complete loss of peripheral circulation or triggering a matter-antimatter implosion.

To further raise a guy’s blood pressure and leave him sitting in the mall fountain babbling dialogue from King Lear, it seems that the numbers describing a woman’s clothing size varies depending on the store you happen to be in. This means that that a “nine” in the Bulimia Boutique is not the same as a “nine” in Bertha’s Palace for Plus-Size Goddesses.

Finally, the male of our species has an extremely short attention span where money is concerned. Women treat a purchase like a sort of savings account, buying things on the premise that they can “always take it back.” For this reason I believe that a woman keeps a sort of mental passbook of all her purchases, so she always has a pretty good idea of what she wants, what she has spent and what she has in “return reserve.”

For a guy, once a dollar spent, it’s spent. If he spends $50 in one store, he will blithely spend $50 in each of the next 20 stores he goes into, never responding to or even understanding the vague feeling of impending bankruptcy that orbits just outside his sphere of consciousness.

So ladies, try to be understanding when your husband cheerfully hands you a gift-wrapped Swifter, a lime green pant suit and a gross of AA batteries on Christmas morning. Just remind yourself that the poor guy is shopmentally challenged - and you can always take it back.

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