So I found this article in the December edition of Real Simple Magazine (in the Life Lessons: Good Intentions) and I thought it just had to be shared:

Bad Santa
You want: a present that expresses how he feels about you (bonus points if it's romantic). He wants: a detailed wish list (bonus points if you'll settle for gift cards). Men aren't Scrooges, Kyle Smith explains. They're just holiday-shopping challenged.

In the mobster movie Donnie Brasco, there's a scene that every guy loves. Al Pacino's broken-down old wise-guy, Lefty Ruggiero, celebrates Christmas by giving a cash-filled envelope to Brasco, a young street hood who has become his protégé (and who is, actually, an undercover FBI agent, played by Johnny Depp). Brasco reciprocates with an envelope stuffed with what appears to be the same amount of money. The two men hug, and everybody seems happy.
The scene is supposed to underline how dumb and crude gangsters are, but doesn't it really show how clueless the rest of us are? Unless yo have kids, you expect to spend about the same amount on holiday presents that others spend on you. But, unlike Donnie Brasco, much of what yo get - and give - will be the wrong size, the wrong style, or completely ill considered.
Just to be clear, I'm not against Christmas. I love Christmas. Midnight Mass is beautiful and serene and holy; Meet Me in St. Lois is a great movie that can be watched only between December 1 and 25 (so is Love Actually); and in the Northeast, where I’ve spent most of my life, the question of whether there will be a white Christmas is always surprisingly suspenseful. I look forward to the family reunions, crackling fires, and goofy shared jokes carried over from last year, especially when all of this is accompanied by pie. It’s the gift giving where I, and many of my male brethren, run into some trouble.
A Jewish friend of mine once expressed incredulity that exchanging Christmas gifts was a valid expression of love or friendship. “Aren’t you just doing each other’s shopping?” she said.
Sort of, except, like most men, I can’t stop.
I feel overwhelmed in malls, and last-minute crowds irk me. (Of course, I cold do my shopping in October, like my mother, but I happen to be really busy every October. Do you have any idea how many football games there are to watch?)
In his novel Microserfs, Douglas Coupland writes that the average male has only about 73 calories of shopping energy, and once they’re gone, they’re gone for the day, if not for the week, and can’t be regenerated. We’re shopping light-weights, and the reason is that the experience stirs up some dour, primal memories of being helpless little kids who spent long stretches of our most impressionable years being dragged from every Casual Corner to Marshall’s to Dress Barn by never-quite-satisfied mothers who responded to our whining by telling us to just hush up and be patient for six more hours. I think I have Post-Traumatic Shopping Disorder.
I’m man enough to admit that many guy gifting errors spring from within. Our misfires, while well-intentioned, are usually a result of our poor listening skills or a general lack of knowledge of women’s vocabulary. I confess that, over the years, I’ve been guilty of the latter many times. (“I thought you said you wanted a tennis racket…. Oh…. What’s a tennis bracelet?”) Female sizes remain a mystery to me. (Why is it that my pants have specific measurements - 32-inch waist, 30-inch inseam – but women’s pants carry mysterious numerals, like 8, that don’t indicate anything? Eight what?) To me, luggage is something made out of sensible glow-in-the-dark nylon held together with thick, webbed straps and stainless-steel D rings so you can strap it onto your back when you’re about to march up a mountain in China. How was I to know it meant a cute quilted bag like something Helena Bonham Carter would have carried to a tea party in Howards End?
My inept gift exchanging hasn’t always been entirely my fault. Before I got married this year, I used to engage in a dismal hobby dating passive-aggressive girls. Christmas is the day they look forward to all year; it is to the passive-aggressive what Halloween is to the Goth. In mid-November, a variation on this conversation would occur about once a week:
She: “So, what are you going to get me?”
He: “What would you like?”
She: “I’m not going ot tell you. You have to guess. Bt it better to be something original, thoughtful, and personal.”
He: “OK. So… a gift certificate to the nearest chain store.”
She: (Icy stare, storms from room, doesn’t speak for four hours.)
Unlike the exes, my wife has been very understanding about my gift-giving issues, and she and other members of my family no longer bother dropping hints to me. They don’t say things like “Oh, just pick out some earrings or a sweater that looks nice.” Left to my own devices, I’m liable to buy something that went out of style back when Joanie Loves Chachi went off the air. Instead, they provide me with detailed Christmas wish list, and I do the same.
But here’s the thing about buying me Christmas presents: I don’t want any. I live in a Manhattan apartment the size of a dog kennel, and my closets and shelves are already heaped with stuff. But if I tell my relatives not to get me anything, they won’t listen. If I don’t give them a list, I could wind up with a grandfather clock or a kayak or a cello. So I’m careful to suggest items readily available from established national retailers. Not everyone in my family plays this way.
My mother collects ceramic Santa Clauses, which stand in phalanxes on her shelves and in a vast china closet. I have no problem with getting her what she wants, even if I find these little figurines frightening and am convinced that every time I turn my back, they move an inch closer to me. But they are limited-edition, special handcrafted signature collectible, and the one she decides to add to her collection every year is, according to eBay, available only from one woman in Lawrence, Kansas. (That holds true whether I’m looking to buy Caribbean Santa, baseball-playing Santa, or unicyclin’ Santa.) I don’t know how to win an auction on eBay, so, in a full-on December 21 panic, I end up paying the inflated “Buy it now” price with extra tacked on for overnight shipping and yet more for gift wrapping, only to discover the next day 15 identical Santas selling for a third of what I just paid.
At other times, Mom has asked for an item she saw in a specific store (sorry, it’s not available on the website), and this is no less terrifying. The stores are teeming with immense, seething crowds and sinister perfume ladies who spritz everyone who comes within 10 yards of them. Because it’s cold outside, I wear a winter coat. But it’s 84 degrees inside, so I develop a boiling headache as I wait in line at the jewelry counter, only to be sent to a different jewelry counter, where I wait behind someone who is determined to try on every bauble in the case. I finally ask about the watch Mom wanted. They probably don’t have it, because it’s nearly Christmas and they’re sold out of everything. But if I’m lucky and find the present I’m looking for, then I get to wait in a gift-wrapping line like the one at the post office on tax day.
Luckily, I have acquired a secret weapon. My wife loves to wrap presents – even her own. She likes some of the same things my mother does and knows where to get them. She actually likes ot shop, especially for other women. I’ve already had the undeniable peasurable experience of sitting by the Christmas tree and seeing my mother open a perfectly wrapped present marked. “To Mom. Love, Kyle.” My mother will respond with something like “Oh, lovely! How did you know I wanted this?” And I’ll just smile mysteriously and look up to see what I got her.