You Spend Christmas Eve Admiring the Set of Dropstars Wheels Your Wife Gave You While Sipping Bourbon-Spiked Eggnog and Watching Die Hard

If you are like most people, you are probably suffering a little stress as Christmas quickly nears. Perhaps you still need to buy gifts or maybe you aren’t looking forward to assembling three bicycles, a wooden play kitchen and a Barbie Dreamhouse on Christmas Eve. If so, take comfort in the fact that there will be plenty of dads frantically assembling gifts on the eve before Christmas. So you are not alone.

If you are not already aware, there are five stages of Christmas toy assembly. For your enjoyment, here they are.

Denial

At about 11 p.m. is when you hit the denial stage. This is when you tell yourself that the 12 boxes from Toys-R-Us are really just preassembled toys or toys that don’t need to be assembled like stuffed animals or books. Well, maybe a couple of those boxes contain toys that you need to assemble, you think to yourself, but it won't take very long and you imagine you will be in bed by midnight at the latest.

Blame

A couple of hours later, while in the midst of throwing a partially assembled Barbie Dreamhouse at the Christmas tree, you hit the blame stage. You will first blame your kids for your unfortunate predicament because, after all, it is their stupid gifts that they wanted. Your daughter had to have the Barbie Dreamhouse and just couldn’t be satisfied with a book or pair of shoes.

You then blame the manufacturer for your dilemma, the fault lies with the people who created such a stupid toy, you hiss under your breath.

Finally, you blame your wife because it was her idea to have kids in the first place.

Reminiscing

Around 2 a.m., you begin to think about Christmas past and Christmas future. Christmas past brings about memories of going to bed early on Christmas Eve so you are well-rested for all of the gifts you will play with on Christmas Day. Christmas future thoughts focus on what you will be doing in 10 or 20 years down the road when the kids are grown up and have moved out. It is these future Christmases that you don't have any toys to assemble and you spend Christmas Eve admiring the set of Dropstars wheels your wife gave you while sipping bourbon-spiked eggnog and watching Die Hard, your favorite Christmas movie.

Prayer

This is the stage in which you promise to quit drinking bourbon-spiked eggnog, stop swearing and will trade your pickup truck in for a minivan if only for a little miracle that will help get these toys assembled.

Acceptance

At about 4 a.m. you have an epiphany, or perhaps it was just a brain hemorrhage, but either way, it clears your head enough that you realize what needs to be done. So you hunker down and muster up every ounce of energy you have left to man-up and finish the assembly project.

You test the bikes to ensure they work, compare the Barbie Dreamhouse you assembled to the picture on the box to make sure it looks right and haul yourself up to bed.

Congratulations, you have just rocked another Christmas Eve.

As you drift off into a deep and much-needed sleep, you dream of all of the toys you will be buying for your kids next year. Books, socks, stuffed animals and maybe an iPad or doll, you will buy them nothing that needs to be assembled.