Let me start by saying, I have three kids—which feels like too many. I was raised by an old-school southern housewife who chaperoned every field trip and doled out sundaes at school events (and carry with me the internalized pressure to do the same). But I have a full-time job, a husband who just had COVID while I solo parented and slept on the couch, and we’re approaching year three of a pandemic in which every close contact and mild fever puts my child in front of a shitty Chromebook he can’t log into, to “learn” (read: smash Goldfish crackers and watch Super Mario videos) for 10 days. Oh, and it’s Christmas.
None of these things work together.
Which is why, this holiday season, I’m feeling an extra dose of fuck it. Before I had kids, I had charming, sentimental ideas of how the holiday would be—most of which were naive and dead wrong. Because you know what I failed to realize? I’d be the one responsible for creating all the magic. (And ensuring everyone had an equal number of similarly-priced requests on their Amazon wish lists, which, by the way, don’t delete after being purchased. Bezos!) All of this is—pardon my French—a fuckton of work.
For Christmas-celebrating parents of littles, December is always extra. We spend the month shopping, wrapping, activity-planning, and generally being the CEOs of Merry Manufacturing (while holding down actual jobs). The stress of holiday duties can do a number on your Christmas spirit. If yours is on life support, what can you do? Less, that’s what. Here are my best suggestions for how to scale back and rescue the few shards of merriment you’ve got left as we cross the goddamn finish line.
Stay off fucking Pinterest
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Unless you are the illicit love child of Nate Berkus and Joanna Gaines (or you just enjoy feeling inadequate) do not open this blasted hub of cozy, curated, unattainable cottagecore porn. You thought your two little sparkly white deer from Target were enough to make your table festive? Well you could be making “simple” DIY orange and clove Christmas topiary centerpieces and mini-cranberry wreath place cards if you weren’t so lazy.
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Pinterest will see your bow slapped on a box of chocolate and raise you reindeer malt ball-filled mason jars bedecked in googly eyes, red pompom noses, and brown pipe cleaner antlers—fun for the whole family. You don’t need that kind of negativity in your life.
Discontinue the Elf on the Shelf
What’s that, you say? You want me to decorate the yard, bake cookies, get teacher presents, make gingerbread houses, research the best Christmas lights in the state, tip every person I’ve ever met, and put a creepy elfin Barbie in new, mischievous scenarios with elaborate backstories every night? (Tonight he’s camping out, using a piece of spaghetti to make s’mores! Tonight he’s having a spa day in a sink full of cotton balls! Tonight he’s wrapped in a tinfoil space suit, hanging from the light fixture like an astronaut!) An elf who miraculously communicates with a jolly fictional man in ways I can’t explain, giving me one more strand in a web of Santa lies I can’t keep straight? An elf who, when I inevitably forget to move him, will give me one more thing to feel I’ve failed at before coffee? Nah. I’m good, thanks.
Don’t go to the mall
Do not, under any circumstances, go into a mall. Do you hear me? You might think, “Oh, I’ll just run in for a few pairs of PJs since it’s too late to have them delivered” and you will walk out, three hours, a migraine, and $287 later cursing not only the Macy’s employee who signed someone up for a new credit card the Saturday before Christmas while 10 people developed sciatica in her interminable line, but also yourself.
Don’t stress about the gifts
When a mom friend texted me this solution to the holiday madness, I didn’t even get it. Well, who buys the gifts then? But she didn’t mean don’t buy presents. She meant don’t worry whether you’ve gotten enough, or the “perfect gift,” citing the undeniable (and dare I say universal?) fact that “my kids 100% do not remember what they even got last Christmas” and her unassailable ethos: “There’s zero chance I’m running out Christmas Eve to get some doll you added to your Santa list last minute.” Besides, “If they don’t get it, it’s a good life lesson you don’t get everything you want all the time.” Heroic statements, all.
(P.S. This includes your spouse’s family. Does your partner have a wallet and a computer? Great! They have everything they need to buy presents for their parents.)
Don’t volunteer to coordinate school parties (or presents)
Firstly, if you are the class parent: Thank you for your service, I love you dearly. Secondly, if there’s no room parent, and the teacher asks if you can help coordinate a winter celebration, listen to me now and hear me later: Don’t. I know you may feel like you should. (I sure do.) But I also know that it becomes 12 moving parts that you’ll likely regret faster than you can say SignUp Genius. (And a nice celebration will be coordinated, anyway.)
Secondly. One year, I volunteered to collect money so one of my kids’ teachers could have a hefty class gift. This was a mistake. Unless you enjoy sending reminders, fielding multiple Do you have Paypal? requests, and tracking deposits across three different accounts, learn from me. Chocolate, gift card, done.
Stop wrapping presents
Don’t get me wrong. I like to have a colorful assortment of papers under the tree, as well as a respectable ratio of wrapped boxes to gift bags. (I also like the idea of slowing down the gift-opening frenzy and my kids having the visceral pleasure of tearing paper.) But. There are times we all need to cut ourselves some slack and quit trying to make everything look so twee. And when a mutant strain of a novel coronavirus is taking a dump on us all is exactly that time. Your kids actually won’t remember, or care, how their gifts are packaged. Dispense with the five-step process of measuring, cutting, folding, taping, and ribboning. Use gift bags, or go hardcore. Wrap only gifts from you, while everything from Santa greets them, unopened, in a nice pile on their favorite chair (or slightly hidden).
Get gift cards wherever possible
Yes, they’re impersonal, and too similar to cash, which, to my mind, should be reserved for things like weddings, graduations, and bar/bat mitzvahs. That said, 2021 has been a boil on the butt of humanity—and you lived through it. As a reward this year, employ any time-saving measure you can. They’re not customized or thoughtful, but they will allow you to bang out multiple gifts in a few minutes—so you have more time to make that dried citrus Christmas garland and DIY candy cane decor. (Kidding. Don’t do either of those.)
Ditch the holiday cards
I love receiving holiday cards—which is why I make holiday cards. I adore receiving happy mail and displaying it so much, I’m afraid to stop making them. But when that first card rolled in Monday after Thanksgiving and I already felt behind, I knew this onerous process of syncing, uploading, selecting, cropping, pithy life-summarizing, and addressing had to go. There’s always 2022.
Not to be corny, but the season and the warm nostalgia we carry with us aren’t about gifts. Not really. Sure, the year we got a scooter, or Sega Genesis, will forever be cemented in our memories. But our kids won’t remember if we didn’t go ice skating. They’ll remember when it was their night to plug in all the Christmas lights, sneaking candy canes off the tree, their dad singing along with Nat King Cole. And the cold nights they got to stay up late with popcorn, cocoa, and a movie.
At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I’m off to watch Alien Xmas.