My Underwhelming Approach to Holiday Merriment Saves Me So Much Stress

Virginia Duan
·7 min read
20

It’s the most wonderful time of year — that is, unless the bulk of the planning and preparation of all Holiday MagicTM is your responsibility. (If you identify as a woman, it’s most likely you). Personally, I am a holiday agnostic. I’m not opposed to someone else doing all the work and appreciate the wonder and joy, but I’m not particularly keen to take on the falalalalala for myself.

After all, as a parent, once the school year starts, you disappear — swallowed into the endless minutiae it takes to help their kids thrive at school. The holidays are smack dab in the middle of the schedules, activities, and assignments. Even I, an avid homeschooler, can appreciate that the holidays are at best inconvenient, and at worst, horribly disruptive and stress-inducing.

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It doesn’t help that in general, gender inequalities are prevalent in household work throughout the year, but housekeeping around the holidays increases for women because of school and child-care closures — not to mention “festive” events. According to a 2021 YouGov poll, 48% of self-identified women said they do all or the bulk of Thanksgiving dinner cooking, while only 25% of men could say the same.

In addition, women are usually the people who tend to and keep up familial relationships during the holidays. We’re the ones planning holiday get togethers, asking for updated addresses, planning the holiday card or letter, asking for present lists, and all the other minute details of making a smooth holiday season where the kids are happy and no family members get unintentionally left behind.

It’s exhausting on a normal day; during the holidays, it’s untenable and impacts our mental health. But as for me, I’m largely unbothered … because ever since I’ve decided to abdicate all responsibility during the holidays (and in general), life’s been great.

I’m tired, aren’t you?

I’m sick of seeing my mom friends just run themselves ragged trying to cook, clean, and care for their families with almost no help from their partners or children. They’re almost always angry, resentful, hurt and just fed up. (And honestly, I don’t blame them. I would be, too.) Throw in the holidays on top of this, and they’re just done. They want to cancel Thanksgiving and Christmas and just leave their families and join a commune.

I used to be just like my friends. I would go all out on Thanksgiving, prepping and making a turkey that no one particularly wanted to eat — even when I had a newborn or was heavily pregnant. I would write yearly Christmas letters and make 200 copies, buy a ton of stamps, and hand-address and mail them. I would spend all year stowing away presents (even though I eventually forgot where I hid them) and buy more at the last minute. I would buy a fresh tree every year and made a big deal out of the kids decorating it with homemade ornaments.

While I enjoyed it, I always felt like a bit of a fraud. I keenly felt the desire to give my kids an “American” holiday experience, even though as a child of immigrants, I was just fine with the way my family had celebrated.

After my husband noted for the umpteenth time how all this rigmarole actually stressed me out and that he would be fine with eating Chinese takeout on Thanksgiving and Christmas, or not even having a tree, I asked myself, “Why? Why am I doing this to myself?”

And so … I stopped.

Who said it had to be you?

No, seriously. Who said?

Examine all the stuff you do for the holidays. Do you even like doing them? Then imagine the worst that would happen if you just … didn’t do it. Usually, nothing happens except a few people are disappointed — and maybe, family or friends might say mean things because you’re no longer behaving in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed.

They’ll get over it. If they really want something to happen, they can plan/cook/buy/decorate it. And if not, oh well.

For instance, this year for Halloween, short of buying the candy, I did nothing. I put up zero decorations, did not buy my kids any costumes, and did not facilitate their trick-or-treating discussions other than to tell them the general start time in our neighborhood. My kids made and posted their own Halloween decorations, asked their father to buy a lot of pumpkins for them to draw on and carve, picked out their own costumes and asked my husband to approve and purchase online, and they made a plan for their trick-or-treating with — you guessed it — their dad.

I asked them to do zero of these things. But since they wanted it, they made it happen. They rose to the occasion admirably.

Just don’t do it.

Yes, I’ll be the anti-Nike here.

I stopped doing anything that I hated for the holidays, all the things that brought me stress instead of joy, and you know what happened? Absolutely nothing.

That’s right. Nothing.

Oh, sure. Some folks asked about the Christmas letters and cards, commenting how they missed them, but overall, I got very little pushback — not even from my mother or children.

My kids know not to expect Christmas presents from us, although they do receive presents from other family members. This year, I gave them the option of having a toy I ordered recently right away or they could wait until Christmas. The four kids were split and finally, the kids who wanted something under the tree won. But all the emotional labor was on them, not me. I just had to press ‘buy.’

Is every family going to be as easy-going as my family and friends were? No, of course not.

Your kids will likely complain about not having a tree, or decorations, or enough presents. Other people — including your own family — will demand you revert back to who you used to be. They’ll say you’re ruining the holidays and that it’s your due as a parent. As a mother.

But why?

Delegate the emotional labor to someone who wants it.

Yes, it really is just as simple as that.

If someone whines to me that they miss XYZ that I used to do for them, I tell them they are welcome to do it! I tell them all the steps it involves, all the work and responsibility, and if they still want to do it, I would be happy to give that to them! It would be my absolute joy, in fact.

And yes, this applies to my children, too.

Of course, we cheated. Two years ago, I gave into their desire to have a Christmas tree after not having one for a few years. I bought a fake tree that was self-lit and made them decorate it. I told them I would not be responsible for putting the tree and its decorations away and since they didn’t want to either, we’ve had the tree up for two continuous years.

There have been absolutely zero consequences. Except for a year-round Christmas tree.

Manage expectations.

Of course, a lot of this works because I have trained my children and husband throughout the year. You see, I have not only applied this tactic to the holidays, but to my life in general — and I can 100% guarantee you that I’m way less stressed than my fellow mom friends.

It’s only fair and right to give your family a heads up, maybe an explanation that you’re tired of carrying the entire burden yourself. It’s your responsibility to follow through (because they won’t believe you). But as for all the other responsibilities, let them go – and feel no guilt about it. Because if your family wants it badly enough, they are more than capable of making it happen.

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