I haven't fine-tuned my Christmas wish list yet. In point of fact, I haven't even started working on it.

But whether I buckle down to this seasonal chore next week or, as usual, wait until 10 p.m. on Christmas Eve, there's one item that absolutely, positively will not be on it.

A skirt.

I'd like to think I'm in the vast majority of males in this regard. But you never know. Ever since reading the latest fashion news from New York, I'm starting to wonder about the sartorial interests of my fellow he-persons.

Currently showing at the Metropolitan Institute of Art is an exhibit called "Bravehearts: Men in Skirts." As the name implies, it features the latest in dress wear for men - with the emphasis on "dress."

Andrew Bolton, associate curator, insists this show is not a masculinity-versus-femininity sort of thing.

I agree totally.

If a man wants to wrap a skirt around his loins, more power to him. Men have been wearing skirts for centuries, and in many cultures they still do. While in Scotland last spring, I saw quite a number of men wearing kilts - men who looked like they could start, actively participate in, and finish a fight in any Cocke County beer joint.

But I don't plan on joining their ranks because I'm convinced pants are a much more practical, comfortable option than skirts.

Have I tried both?

No. I don't need to. All I have to do is look around at the she-people and realize how many of them are wearing pants these days.

Women aren't dumb. They know from years of experience that britches make more sense than any other type of lower-body garment. That's especially true this time of year.

Pants are warmer.

They keep drafts at bay.

They don't get caught in car doors.

Thanks to the wonders of elastic, they are more forgiving of bulbous guts.

And if you want to cross your legs while seated, you don't have to worry about exposing the epicenter to curious onlookers.

Women had to suffer through years of discrimination before they could wear pants freely.

When my wife and I were undergraduates at the University of Tennessee in the mid-1960s - technically, she was my girlfriend at the time - there was an honest-to-gosh temperature dress code for women. Mary Ann, a certified she-person, remembers it was 17 degrees.

No joke. Seventeen and below, female students could wear pants to class. Above that magic mark, skirts were required.

Like a lot of silly social rules Back Then, this was blindly accepted as rote. It has long-since been abandoned.

"Who decided when and where it was officially 17 degrees?" I asked her the other day. "What if, say, you lived in Kodak and your thermometer registered 16, so you put on pants, but by the time you drove into Knoxville, a thermometer on The Strip was showing 19? Did you have to go home and change?"

Mary Ann couldn't remember for sure. However, she did note that I was always eager to assist anytime a change of clothes was in order.

Yeah, I sorta remember it that way myself.