Being Father Christmas, part 1: The year Daddy ran Christmas

About the story: This is the first part of a four-part look at how a reporter accepted the challenge to run Christmas for his family.

The first thing I did when I ran Christmas was cancel the cookie-baking party.

Some fathers may decide otherwise, based on their individual home holiday needs, but I think most will find my logic unassailable: There are high-quality store-bought cookies to be had at reasonable prices throughout the holiday season. Their forms, unlike certain homemade efforts, are die-cast perfect, with bell-shaped bells and ideal triangular trees. They all taste exactly the same. They are never burned.

Why, then, add to the stress of the holidays by filling the kitchen with messy mixing bowls and messier neighbor children, just to create tray after tray of vaguely Santa-shaped blobs of smoking sugar?

No reason at all, as I pointed out to the children, explaining how our new streamlined Christmas would feature, among other improvements, more cookies with less effort.

Oh, they howled a bit. "Mommy always has the cookie party; Mommy always lets us add twice the chocolate chips; Mommy always laughs when we cover the dog in flour handprints."

Mommy, Mommy, Mommy.

Well kids, Mommy is not in charge of Christmas this year.

Daddy is.

It was only October, but those two magazine editors were just full of holiday mirth when they told me their hilarious idea. They were both women, both mothers, and both thought it would just be a stitch to have a father in charge of Christmas!

The Two Magazine Editors just laughed and laughed.

Imagine! they said. A father! Have you ever?

Well, yes, I have. As a matter fact, I pretty much run Christmas in my house. Oh, my wife, Ann, is a help, of course. Christmas would be much more difficult without her. But I do all the really crucial parts, many of which require the use of hand tools.

I'm the one who hangs the lights along the front of the house each year (or, if I've efficiently left them up from the year before, I'm the one who plugs them back in).

Two weekends before the big day, I'm the one who marches the kids to the fire station a few blocks from our house, where I bungee cord a Fraser fir onto our red Radio Flyer wagon and pull it home, trim the end (with a very sharp handsaw) and then screw it into the tree stand. Using pliers.

Needless to say, I'm in charge of stringing the lights on the tree and managing the three-pronged plug.

But I'm more than just a holiday handyman. On Dec. 24, I'm the one who throws the shrimp, corn, sausage and beer into the big stockpot for our traditional Christmas Eve shrimp boil. Prep time: 9 mins.

Voila! Another perfect Christmas, produced year after year for the pleasure of my family. I don't begrudge a minute of it, but, boy, am I exhausted when it's finally over.

The Two Magazine Editors looked at each other. That's it• they said. That's what you do for Christmas each year?

Well, if there is any grilling or fire lighting, I do that, too, I said.

What about the presents• they asked. What about the Christmas cards• What about the shopping, the decorating, the planning, the entertaining, the wrapping, the shipping, the baking?

Oh, I said, pondering those Christmas extras. I guess that's the part Ann takes care of.

If you've ever seen the faces of two detectives just as they finally capture a serial killer in the gruesome act, you've basically seen the faces of two female magazine editors who have confirmed their worst suspicions of male lameness. The expressions of appalled triumph are essentially identical.

In that case, the Two Magazine Editors said patiently, why don't you go home and ask Ann what she would think of you doing everything for Christmas• Everything, they repeated, even her "part."

So I did. I went home and repeated their proposal to Ann.

And she laughed.

She laughed and laughed. She laughed just like the Two Magazine Editors did.

"You?" she said finally. "Do Christmas??"

I was beginning to detect a general misapprehension by women about one of Christendom's signature holidays. To us men, it's clear that Christmas is primarily a male happening. For one thing, all the principals are men: Jesus, George Bailey, Yukon Cornelius. And, of course, Mr. December himself. What could be more manly than a hotshot pilot with a beer belly and a beard who runs a billion-dollar enterprise by day and tomcats around all night• I have long suspected that Santa spends much of the off-season on a Harley somewhere.

Christmas is obviously built of man stuff: lumberjacking, electrical engineering, bicycle assembly and just-in-time cargo logistics. Remember, when what Jesus needed most was frankincense and myrrh, it wasn't the Three Wise Persons-of-Gender who showed up with the goods. It was the Three Wise ... well, you get it.

Heck, what is Christmas but history's longest-running boy's birthday party• Basically, it's a 2,000-year-old Chuck E. Cheese bash, with caroling.

Go ahead, name a major female Christmas figure. A big shout out to Mary, of course. But once you've tipped your cap to the Mother of Christ, Mrs. Claus and Little Cindy Lou Who, you've pretty much exhausted the Christmas Female Hall of Fame.

And yet, women still lay their own claim to the holiday, one that seems to do with presents, cards and baked goods.

"Fine," I said to Ann. "I'll do all that, too. I'll do everything this year."

And she said, "Deal."