I'm offering Santa Claus as much space as my Christmas stocking will allow for him and his elves to exercise their first amendment right of assembly.

Occupy my stocking and fully embrace your right to assemble freely.

Please. I don't want to pay for it and I cannot assemble anything myself.

I'll increase the size of my stocking exponentially to accommodate as much free assembly as necessary because everyone knows that at Christmas some assembly is always required.

Unfortunately, my constitution does not bear up well when tasked with assembling toys that I thought I'd paid the manufacturer to put together when I whipped out the credit card.

There was the notable occasion when I tried to exercise my own right of assembly one Christmas Eve, much to my daughter's chagrin, because the tricycle I was attempting to assemble per the instructions ended up looking like a bad piece of modern sculpture.

Most embarrassing was the fact I had trapped myself inside it, actually mis-constructed it around me, like a jail cell.

With or without me, it looked like something you could leave at the landfill as long as you drove away real quick.

In the interest of full disclosure, I declare quite openly that I am not among the 99.9 percent who know how to insert part A into bracket B to accommodate the needs of slot C.

If I am asked to combine any letter of the alphabet with even the smallest assembly requirement my hands-on skills deteriorate more rapidly than an elephant falling down an elevator shaft and then rebounding safely to the 55th floor thanks to an unexpected trampoline assembled by someone else.

A monkey wrench, to me, means that I have slipped on a banana peel and hurt my back.

I make a dog's breakfast of any “assembly required” that even a starving dog would refuse to eat.

That is why I am inviting Santa and his elves to occupy my stocking and then fill it with a dozen or so gifts for myself and my family before the North Pole crew head out on Santa's sleigh.

Honestly, I can just about turn a screwdriver so long as an actual screw is not involved.

I can hammer as long as it takes to make a loud repetitive noise if you don't need me to make contact with the nail.

Seriously, my home improvement skill is just this-flushing the toilet.

Ask my wife. She'll tell you.

No, don't, because she'll tell you.

She'll tell you, and with justification, that I'm not even a plumber's helper.

Let me put it this way-if Christmas Eve's global gift deliveries depended on my assembling Santa's sled then he'd walk from the North Pole and have a better chance of filling every stocking on Earth.

For that reason, I am not optimistic Santa and his elves will accept my invitation.

Santa hasn't gotten through this many Christmas Eves by jumping at fads like the occupy movement I offer in my stocking.

We live in America and freedom of assembly is assured as a constitutional right.

Freedom of assembly, yes, but it still requires skill to exercise that freedom wisely and with great effect.

I can just about blow my own nose but I can handle free speech:

Merry Christmas to you all and thank you so much for reading.