Creating Holiday Magic Shouldn't Just Be a Mom's Responsibility
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Last Christmas Eve, as wind whirled outside our home amidst a frosty winter, my husband and I crouched beside our couch in the dark of night. We arranged gaily wrapped presents just-so beneath a hand-selected pine tree. We scarfed iced sugar cookies from a fireside plate left out by our son and daughter, artfully scattering crumbs, as though the snacker had eaten in a hurry and then rushed away. We were just maneuvering the coup de grâce, an elaborate ‘elven-made’ Elsa dollhouse that had sat atop our daughter’s wish list for months, into place beneath the tree when my husband hit a button we hadn’t known existed. “Into The Unknown” blasted through the silence of our home.
We froze, like thieves caught mid-museum heist, hopeful the blaring castle wouldn’t wake our children. Hopeful we hadn’t accidentally spoiled the magic we were trying so hard to create.
It was all about the magic, after all. We’d chosen to creep through the night like this, to do all this merry-making in secret, in an effort to create a sense of awe, rendering our own role entirely invisible, handed off instead to a mythical, jolly man with a North Pole full of his own behind-the-scenes workers.
So much of the work of holidays unfolds like this, downstairs while children are sleeping, in kitchens while extended family relaxes before the glow of the TV or tosses a football around amongst russet leaves, in the last-minute arrangement of cheese and salami slices into an artistic charcuterie board before visitors arrive.
Historically, most of that behind-the-scenes holiday work has fallen to women. Journalist Judith Shulevitz referred to it as the ‘triple shift,’ a reference to the already over-large share of domestic work women carry above their paid labor, and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow Aubrey Hirsch wrote and illustrated a piece about the exhaustion that additional holiday labor can create.
I spoke with Kate Mangino, author of Equal Partners: Improving Gender Equality at Home, who has also delved deeply into the topic of domestic fairness, about how this happens and how families can begin to share this often-invisible work that makes the holidays special. “There’s still this idea that a lot of the women’s work, the female-coded work, is brought on by women,” Mangino says in our discussion. “As in, you’re doing something you don’t have to do.”
Her research shows that often, the tasks that make a house a home fall into two broad categories: the physical tasks like washing dishes and grocery shopping and laundry that must happen, and the emotional ones, like noticing that your kids’ favorite movie is now on Disney+ and planning a family movie night or picking up your spouse’s favorite treat as a surprise.
Often, holiday fun falls into the nebulous area of emotional tasks. In an interview with journalist Anne Helen Peterson, Mangino credits the ‘Noticers’ as those who often provide the cozy touches that make a house into a home, which may not always be appreciated. Yet these emotional tasks matter, Mangino tells me, and dismissing them as optional denies their importance in building relationships, creating rituals and making the connections that create community.
Taking family photos, sending cards, baking treats for neighbors, finding matching pajamas or hosting meals are each things that do not strictly need to be done, but things of that nature contribute enormously to the sense of cheer so many of us associate with the holiday season, Mangino says. “The outcome of these tasks are deeply valued, far more than we realize,” she adds.
The perception that the emotional labor of holidays is unimportant can also be damaging, Mangino says, even in families that typically split the physical tasks fairly. A partner who prioritizes both the physical and emotional tasks, often the woman in heterosexual relationships, can end up doing all of the cooking and cleaning and caring and comfort of creating a joyous holiday season — all alone.
As Shulevitz and Hirsch note, it can quickly become both physically and mentally overwhelming, this sense that holiday joy is entirely on the woman’s shoulders, that she alone is responsible for her family’s happiness, especially if that family doesn’t understand or recognize the importance of those tasks.
My husband and I want our son and daughter to have fond memories of this time at home; we want them to look back on their childhoods as magical. But that sense of awe is supported by a foundation of labor, and it’s not too early to consider how we could teach our children, as they grow older, to not only have an appreciation for the work involved with wonder, but also to become helpers in creating those feelings for others and for themselves.
For Mangino, a key factor in creating an equal partnership, and including your children, is thinking of the dynamic like a team. “As the kids grow up, your team grows,” she says. “There’s a lot to be said about sharing in the work so it feels more like joy and less like labor.”
To create a holiday season where everyone in the family learns to contribute, she suggests holding a family meeting at the start of the season and asking for everyone’s ideas on what might make the holiday special. Be open to their suggestions — artistic kids may opt to create their own decorations, while kids who are into cooking might want to try out a different recipe than you’ve made in previous years. Social butterflies could prefer to plan a holiday get-together with friends. (And the flip side: If it turns out that nobody values something like sending out holiday cards, skip them!)
Let them help define what a magical holiday means to your family, and crucially, let them take the lead in planning and executing their idea so it doesn’t become additional labor for anyone else. Let it be fun, let it be joyous, and let them fail, if need be, she advises. If possible, give your children the opportunity to practice both practical skills like cleaning, as well as emotional nurturing skills, like snuggling together to read a holiday tale, so they grow into partners equipped to appreciate and handle both. Teaching kids that every project has a beginning, a middle and an end, and that a task isn’t done until it’s cleaned and put away, is one of the ways to teach kids to be independent problem-solvers, says Dr. Damon Korb, author of Raising an Organized Child.
Each year, our family chooses an organization for our holiday donation, together. The year our young son was obsessed with sea animals, we donated to a marine mammal center working to feed hungry seals. The next, our daughter requested we start packing snacks in our car so we’d have something to hand out if we passed someone roadside who looked hungry. That they’ve begun to notice ways to help in the world, and to understand that they can provide it, has been an empowering experience for all of us.
This year, in accordance with Mangino’s advice, we’ll also let our kids take the lead in organizing how we celebrate the holidays within our home, even at 6 and 8 years old, whether it’s a movie marathon or mounds of peppermint crumbles atop hot chocolate or a surprise we never could have dreamed up that one day becomes a beloved ritual. We’ll also drop off treats for our neighbors together and let the kids stamp the cards for faraway friends, all acts of building and maintaining bonds that are important to our family — and perhaps for the first time, we’ll describe those acts that way.
As our children become older, their days of innocent wonder will draw to a close. We’ll try to keep it going as long as we can, still chomping off misshapen chunks of carrots at midnight, exactly like a flying reindeer might, and feigning amazement in the morning, delighting in their delight. We’ll also look forward to the day when they are in on the magic, and the wonderful ways they decide to create their own — and maybe they’ll join us downstairs as they grow, scarfing sugar cookies and scattering crumbs by the fireplace, making a new kind of magic, together.
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