With Christmas finally here, many of us are going to spend a lot of time talking to many relatives we haven't seen in a while. Then on New Year's Eve we're going to spend a lot of time hitting on everybody else's girlfriends at the party, or whatever it is you do. That's a lot of conversations with people with whom you may have little in common. Here is one way of finding common ground in a difficult subject.

Guys generally have a hard time explaining guy hobbies to women. No matter whether you're doing the explaining or being poorly explained to, it helps to generalize the subject and describe it as guys competing for status. For example, here's how I managed to explain fantasy football to a couple of women.

I start off with the idea that guys like to argue about sports and try to prove who knows the most about sports. Those arguments are difficult to actually settle, though, so there is rarely a clear winner and loser. Fantasy football gives us a way to actually quantify the "Rooney or Drogba" argument and find a winner there, plus it also requires some knowledge of obscure players who are cheap. It basically lets guys prove who actually knows more about sports, and winning your mini-league makes you more respected and important in your circle of friends.

Women will generally roll their eyes and think "wow, guys sure are stupid", but they'll understand what it's about. They'll also think you must be very smart and perceptive if you can explain guy stuff in a way that they get. Sure, it's a vast simplification (you don't want to explain that being good at math is just as important as understanding the players' skills) and a lot of guy stuff is not only about competition, but even fishing and hunting contain a large element of showing other guys you're better than them. Some other things guys do are, of course, about showing women you're better than other guys, but women don't generally need that explained to them.

Of course "guy stuff" doesn't include male-dominated nerd activities, whether it's reenacting medieval combat or watching science fiction movies. That's nerd stuff, not guy stuff, and there is no good explanation for it.