Some of you - especially those of you who have now, or have had in years passed, small children - may know from first-had experience that there are three words which strike fear into the heart of a parent on Christmas Eve, three words which inspire nightmares on the night before Christmas. They sound innocent enough, these three simple words. But if you’ve had prior experience with them, you know what it means to encounter the words: SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.

How well I remember one close encounter with those dreaded words. It was Christmas Eve, not too many years ago, when I engaged in fierce, hand-to-hand combat with a rocking horse. It came in a large, innocent-looking box. It was meant to be our daughter’s "big present" that year. We had already taken photograph after photograph with th…