From "Why I Gave Up Holiday Hosting," by Elizabeth Austin, who hosted her family's Christmas dinner for 20 years.
ADDED: It's not automatic that others will step up and make Christmas Christmas. It may very well be that everyone who might have stepped up will simply participate in the family-wide realization: Christmas was Mom. It's an echo of the childhood realization that Santa Claus is your parents. Once you have that realization, the magic is gone. You might have someone in your family whose newfound capability takes the form of becoming the new Mom, the new embodiment of Christmas — Christmas understood as a set of family traditions imbued with love and excitement. But the newfound capability might take the form of analyzing whether any of it mattered enough to play-act the traditions year after year. It might take the form of recapturing the religious narrative. The idea of just getting other people to cook the dinner might strike the younger folks as threadbare and sad.
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62 comments:
"The pattern is familiar to many eldest daughters, who inherit the invisible work of family cohesion through a mysterious combination of gender and birth order. We become the keepers of tradition and the executors of emotional labor"
Also known as the matriarch of the family.
An old story - being taken for granted.
Is it just me, or is every NYT feature a tale of sad people and their pathetic lives and stupid choices?
She says she quit but I suspect she was fired:
“Instead, I was saved by circumstance: My younger brother and his wife bought a house 12 minutes from mine. With a dining room that fit a table for 12, counter space that could accommodate more than one cutting board and an ice maker built into the refrigerator, their house was the logical place to gather.“
My view is that the plenary family holiday is, or will be as the 60-70 something host generation passes on, a thing of the past. Now I see smaller, less inclusive gatherings, with the 30 something members and their children shuttling across various locations. First her mother, then to his dad, then her dad, then his sisters.
There could have been an interim phase where she set the table and bought and cooked some of the food, but others had to bring some of the food, and everyone but her had to work on the clean up and accomplish the entire thing.
Oh, and all children between 7-14 oblivious to the surrounding proceedings, face glued to a screen.
The Professional Victim speaks. If your kids are sitting on the couch after the meal, tell them to get up and get busy washing or drying. Same for the siblings: It's called Planning.
Merry Christmas All.
Lois Griffin had to learn the hard way.
"There could have been an interim phase where she set the table and bought and cooked some of the food, but others had to bring some of the food, and everyone but her had to work on the clean up and accomplish the entire thing."
Which describes every family holiday get together I have ever attended.
This is such a chicken and egg thing for me. Very similar to the dishwasher.
My husband rarely loads the dishwasher. Is it because he knows I’ll load it? Or is it because I snipe at him for loading it the wrong way? Should he take the time to learn the right way or should I accept the dishwasher however it is loaded (keeping my mouth shut)?
There has been so much online about Christmas stockings. I do everyone’s stocking. Including my sister’s and father-in-law’s. My husband and son do mine. Are they the same? No. I spend all year picking up small things for the family. My stocking gets one or two days…but my husband and son have developed a tradition of going out together and finding goodies for it. Are the goodies sometimes the items left unwanted in the last few shopping days before Christmas? Yes. But they have fun together and spend the entire day (or two) thinking about me. Going shop to shop - a Christmas miracle in itself because they both hate shopping. So, I happily enjoy my stocking (that sometimes looks like it was put together by a rabid raccoon), listening to the story behind why they chose each item. And the mischief they got into together while out shopping (as adults).
Some women need to recognize that their way isn’t the only way and you might need to allow new traditions to flourish.
Checking one’s motive then having the right motive changes the entire equation. if the motive is “oh no, we must keep the tradition going”, or the motive is keeping up with the Jones’s or any other competition for the sake of appearance, the burden will get heavy, and the cost benefit ratio starts to go top heavy. If the motive is love and gathering amd connection, well, what cost is too high for that?
The advent of helicopter parenting killed the idea kids should contribute labor to the family. Yes, involving kids is messy, slow, and requires a lot of nagging which doesn't fit well with a tightly organized and regimented schedule of activities, leading parents just doing the chores themselves. The end result, however, is somebody whining about 'emotional labor'.
Generally someone plays host - they provide the venue and that person is the Patriarch and/or Matriarch. They coordinate with the families attending on what dishes they are bringing so there is no redundancy, though for the most part that is already known because what is brought by who is a tradition. My wife makes cinnamon roles, I smoke salmon. After dinner and football watching you then divvy up the leftovers and help with cleanup.
The competition to host Christmas is as fierce as the pursuit of the National Championship in college football. And the season starts much earlier. Not to mention the annual decorating sweepstakes.
If you keep your eyes open you'll see that in many families there are just as many large, labor-intensive traditions kept going by men as there are by women; it's just that the men tend not to write essays about how aggrieved they are by the work.
(To be fair, 95% of the women don't feel the need to let everyone know how aggrieved they are by the work, either. But that's ok because the 5% make up for the rest).
Re dinners. My mom always did Christmas Eve for my side of the family and I did Christmas Day for the extended family. My in-laws did take out food Christmas Eve. Not my father-in-law he was with my family.
It was this way for decades until my mom couldn’t do it anymore. I did her Christmas Eve dinner one year and told everyone that didn’t work for me. Now we get take out Christmas Eve and I cook Christmas Day. Could somebody else cook Christmas Eve dinner? For me personally, no because I don’t enjoy other people in my kitchen and we have the most room for get togethers.
All of this isn’t for forever. At some point my son may marry and there will most likely be years where we aren’t together. Or where we are included in a new family’s way of celebrating - if they celebrate.
PS my mom’s dinner was the best!
It wasn’t really malicious on their part.
If it ain't broke, why fix it? Nobody is going to start questioning family dinners that have been going so well.
Being in charge doesn't mean you do everything. It takes effort to make it a collaborative event.
I am the bachelor uncle in a big family. Expectations were low, but I always make something. More crucially, I hectored my college-aged nephews to bring something so they weren't freeloaders. Bread, soft drinks, chips, whatever, just something so they were in the game.
Oddly, their moms didn't see the point until I explained it. My nieces never had to be coaxed. Family traditions have to be taught and explained.
Getting others to assist means a loss of control. I suspect that may be part of the author's issue.
I agree with Left Bank. We are the host, because we chose our house to be able to host. We will probably have 20 over this year, but we’ve hosted over 40. My sister-in-law is working on taking over Thanksgiving. We’ve had years when we weren’t as in the mood to put up all the decorations, and we don’t always do traditional (like this year’s Thanksgiving had no turkey and instead had a Picanha).
But the wife quitting family tradition seems a new progressive theme. Watched the Prime movie “Oh. What. Fun.” and that was the basic premise. Mom, Michelle Pfeiffer, got tired of hosting, being put upon, her desires being ignored, so she runs off. The more noticeable problem are irresponsible grown adult children.
There’s a temptation to self pity and resentment. These are actually sins. Here’s the prayer I’ve said once or twice over the many years of hosting: “God, thank you for giving me a sound body and sound mind. Thank you for giving me the means to own a comfortable home that can hold all these people on Christmas. Even more so, thank you that I HAVE people who love me and want to spend the holiday with me! And thank you for blessing me with the skills — organizational and culinary — that allow me to welcome them. So many people are impoverished or isolated or sick or alone today. Help me to see the many blessings you have lavished on me, and not sinfully focus on self pity or resentment in the midst of these blessings. Give me a heart to serve them gladly, Lord, and in doing so, serve you. In Christ’s name, Amen.”
For fifty years, I walked into kitchens and asked what I could do to help, and was told to bring some chairs up from the basement. When it became obvious that we now had surplus chairs upstairs, I stopped bothering to ask.
My parents married during the Depression. I was in high school before I found out people got presents in their stockings. We got a selection of fruit (apples, oranges, etc) and nuts. Not the regular 5 pound bag type but individual specimens of fruit appropriate to being photographed for a magazine cover. To people who lived through a depression, quality fruit was a present. Generally we scavenged what we wanted most and then dumped the rest in communal fruit bowl. My brothers needed their socks back to wear to school.
Reply to ChrisC @ 0643 Yah. That's exactly what the NYT is now. It has become the Dorian Gray portrait of the East Egg swells. IYKYK.
RoseAnne when I was little our stocking always had an orange in it. Stockings were filled with a few items that we needed. A new toothbrush, underwear, socks etc. Sometimes if we’d gotten a toy that needed batteries the batteries would be in our stocking. My husband, son, and father-in-law get socks and underwear in their stocking every year as a nod to my childhood. Even though we can now afford to buy such necessities as the need arises.
That's a beautiful prayer, Jessica.
It’s not the work it’s whether the magic is there or not.
When the magic is gone it becomes a damn chore.
Stockings should always contain a chocolate orange (Terry's brand) and maple sugar candy.
Most of my adult life has been no big “family” Christmas. Mainly because I was on the opposite coast and refused to travel that time of year. My husband and I developed our own traditions. Sometimes we hosted folks (friends) on Christmas Eve, depending on schedules. We’d take a long walk in the afternoon in NYC and ending up at the sadly now-closed Cafe Loup for an early Christmas dinner. But we don’t have kids, so….
I hosted Christmas dinner for friends for 20 years. I always enjoyed it - the shopping, prep, cooking, eating, drinking…. It was easy because the menu never changed: prime rib roast, potatoes dauphinois, baguette, many bottles of red wine. Friends would bring wine. Over the years people died or moved away, and now the dinner is no more. I miss it.
reader said...
“This is such a chicken and egg thing for me. Very similar to the dishwasher.
My husband rarely loads the dishwasher. Is it because he knows I’ll load it? Or is it because I snipe at him for loading it the wrong way? Should he take the time to learn the right way or should I accept the dishwasher however it is loaded (keeping my mouth shut)?“
You are at least partly the reason why your husband does do as many things around the house as you’d like. First, there’s the automatic assumption that your way of doing things is the onlyright way and his way is always wrong. It doesn’t take long for a man faced with constant criticism to give up and develop a “why bother?” attitude. If you learned to accept that just because he does something in a different way, it doesn’t automatically mean he’s wrong, things will go better for you. However, it may be too late if this has been your pattern for a long time.
"I had to be in control, and my family thought I enjoyed doing it, but it turned out that I just had a martyr complex. Which I've passed along to my daughters."
Reminds me of the meme going round:
“My toxic trait is not letting anyone else clean because it's not clean unless I clean it. Then getting mad when nobody is helping me clean.”
Larry J exactly. And the same is true for Christmas and its traditions.
We adjusted our pattern decades ago and the first step in solving the problem was recognizing it :)
When I first saw the heading, I thought this was another Reiner-related post. Maybe it still is. CC, JSM
Does the MSM ever have an article which celebrates Christmas? Or talks about some family that celeberates an old-timey Christmas and love it? "So-and-So family decided to return to family traditions, and are loving it".
No its always someone unhappy with Christmas. Assuming they even mention the "christmas". The forbidden word. Or its about Jews reaching back to their roots to celebrate their holidays, or a black/immigrant enjoying the "holiday" .
We count on women, "Mom" especially to keep all the family celebrations going. If you counted on men, you'd end up with a can of beans and a jug of whiskey.
Its tough when everyone is scattered all over the country to get together for Christmas or Thanksgiving. We decided to have our big family get-together (Uncles, Aunts, etc) on Thanksgiving. Don't know - but that's the tradition. Christmas was/is just for the immediate family.
Idea for a Christmas horror film: strange noises and eerie comings and goings around the house lead a child to the horrifying discovery that his parents are Santa Claus (or -- if that's not terrifying enough -- that they killed Santa Claus).
Larry J we were both wrong.
The plates didn’t have to be on the left and pots on the right every time (even though that soothes my regimented little soul). They were clean regardless.
But bowls can’t go in right side up. That just creates ponds of dirty water in dirty bowls.
It was I, the oldest and male, who carried on the Christmas traditions. My sister could not be bothered. Or, sober. Then she moved twelve hundred miles away and was not part of Christmas, at all. My daughter, and the oldest, started taking over when my wife and I began caring for her father who needed 24x7 care. And, then it was me taking care of my mother 24x7. My wife has been decorating the interior of the house and I have been lighting the exterior - as my father did - since we were married. It has progressed to where the exterior is also decorated beyond lights. I tell my wife, we could have been set decorators - haha, if only.
@Jessica
I copied your prayer and intend to use it. Thanks!
Our kids are young adults, the youngest graduating from college this spring. For some years, we've been doing what we call "hotel Christmas" - something we came up with the first time we were going to be taking a vacation NOT to visit family on Christmas day (we continued to visit family around Christmas but no longer did the alternating-year this grandparent/that grandparent thing): through a drawing process of sorts*, each person is assigned one person for whom to get gifts totalling no more than $50 and taking up no more space than a Christmas stocking (that I provide, and store from year to year) and one other thing. That way new gifts fitting into luggage isn't so much of a problem. Recently we added making a Chatgpt Christmas card for your assigned person. (One year the kid assigned to me had Chat do a Christmas rap, for instance.) We have a 1-foot Christmas tree with lights and miniature ornaments that I squish into my luggage.
* The drawing process is now my daughter. Every year she asks everyone a question - this year it was "favorite light fixture," last year "pop culture moment." Then she matches people up based on "vibes." I (that one light bulb that's been burning for well over a hundred years) was assigned to my youngest (a thermionic emission bulb). The daughter is very even-handed about who "gets" our oldest, who always blows the budget.
Anyway. Now that we are nomadic, I will admit I'm having some trouble getting into the proper state of mind this year. Working on it...
Come to think of it, Christmas has not been the same since my step mom died.
My personal family commitments have advanced from nuclear to atomic, but my observations of the traditional families in the small town where I grew up lead me to believe that people included their children and their spouses in preparing for Christmas and as time passed the burdens of preparation shifted to the next generation in a natural way. Both daughters and daughters in laws cooking and sons and sons in laws getting up on the ladder to hang the lights.
This is how DJT sees Europe.
My wife and I used to be quite the Christmas hosts for the few remaining and/or nearby family members; time was, we even had a houseful of family and old friends at Christmas time, but those days are gone.
This year even my wife--a Christmas sentimentalist if ever there was one--is kind of 'meh' about the whole thing, but that won't stop her feeling responsible for everyone else's satisfactory (or otherwise) experience.
Our son, who fancies himself a cook, is baking a ham. We're waiting to see what his gf's larger and closer families are doing before we set our own very modest celebration.
“Christmas is Mom”
Very true in my large birth family. She really knew how to bring the magic and did so for 50+ years. Obviously, as she aged, her children and took on the supply and logistics of the event but she provided the spirit and gravitational pull that gathered us.
We’ve always tried to do the same for our children but, man, my Mother’s Christmas celebrations had a unique and unreplicable quality.
I've never been a big Christmas guy, but my wife loves it, and really gets into the whole thing. The kids always come home with their families, and it's OK.
My youngest brother was "Mr. Christmas" in his home town, until he passed suddenly in January. His wife called me yesterday and we spoke for an hour. It's clear he's really missed by all there.
My ma, the widow lady, tried her best, but she could only afford used ashes and short switches for her four boys.
Actually we usually got what we needed (clothes etc) and a lot of stuff we wanted, between her and Oma and our spinster aunt while she was still alive.
Will the women who make up our privileged ruling class ever stop moaning and groaning, bitching and whining about how hard their lives are? Screw these harridans.
It's hard for me to feel sympathy for this women who, for years, did something she didn't want to do, and now blames the receivers for partaking. Someone gives me a gift that they really didn't want to give but felt obligated to, then blames me for accepting that gift. Oh, and then goes to the Press with her gripes.
NYT seems to have had a string of articles recently about women bitching about feeling overburdened by being responsible for some family thing - hosting holidays, cooking dinner, whatever - and deciding "f 'em all, I am done" and portraying this as empowering and somehow beneficial. No thought (or at least ink) about what the rest of the family has done/is doing for the woman. Odd, huh?
Many family holiday type events don’t survive once the minors reach the age of consent.
"reader said...
“This is such a chicken and egg thing for me. Very similar to the dishwasher.
My husband rarely loads the dishwasher. Is it because he knows I’ll load it? Or is it because I snipe at him for loading it the wrong way? Should he take the time to learn the right way or should I accept the dishwasher however it is loaded (keeping my mouth shut)?“
I can relate. So annoying the way my wife mows the lawn or polishes the car.
And, don't get me started on making a mess on the garage floor when she changes the oil in the Acura, EVERYTIME.
J"osephbleau said...
Many family holiday type events don’t survive once the minors reach the age of consent."
Or become incarcerated.
I’ve seen this before. Drama queen loves Christmas and works hard to make everyone love her and her favorite holiday. No one cares as much as her and she eventually gets burned out. Loudly crashes out about how hard she works. No one but her ever cared.
Guys do the same thing with brisket. Everyone else knows it’s dry and doesn’t say anything.
I am one of seven siblings. My parents have (had?) 21 grandchildren. By the late ‘90s it became apparent that it would be a challenge to get everyone - with spouses - together under one roof. Fortunately, one of my nieces has a house that was made for entertaining, and she has started hosting holidays for the family still in town.
RC,
> Does the MSM ever have an article
> which celebrates Christmas?
This is a rhetorical question, right?
reader,
Please please tell us you're joking about the bowls!
These people that show up in the NYT's (and other MSM publications) always come off as such freaks. I never read about them and go, "Wow, its just like X". Instead its "I dont know anyone like that".
Probably so..extreme. They also seem lack any commonsense or grounding in Christianity. They're always emotional and worked up about something most people take in their stride. They're also perfectionists, when they aren't weirdos of some kind.
"OMG, I worked hard to make everyone happy at Christmas, but now I'm through with it, dammit. They can take their mistel toe and shove it!"
Well maybe if you had chilled out and not tried to make everyone happy, you'd not be unhappy now. You get the feeling these people want to live in a perfectionist fantasy world, and when it doesn't work out, they go to the other extreme.
Of course, the NYT's has to publish this sort of crap to entertain its readers.
In my family, multiple people love to cook and entertain. I like the idea of the young ones -- the ones under 12 -- taking it all for granted, and then seeing the teenagers and 20-somethings and 30-somethings gradually lending more and more of a hand. I'd say the people in the middle years view the work they are doing as a gift to the oldsters and the youngsters, and get a big sense of reward from that.
I am not joking. I have accepted the fact that he just doesn’t care. He is in a hurry and dumps his bowl in not paying attention. The majority of the time I just dump the water out and place it back in. But there are times it will pluck my last nerve.
I do the majority of the holiday work but my husband has his contribution. They are things that I have absolutely no desire to do and appreciate heartily.
I wrote my comments from a place of humor. Over 30 years in and we are both well aware of each other’s nature. I love him to pieces and am extremely blessed that he loves me.
But let it be known…there is a wrong way to load the dishwasher.
Christmas hung on for a few years after my wife and mom died. My younger sister held it together till her kids were out of college and her piece of shit husband finally split. Now? We don’t even talk about it. It’s not as fun as it sounds.
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