Editor’s note: This story may contain spoilers for prying little eyes!
Decorating the house, buying presents, gift wrapping, sending cards, packing, planning travel, making cookies. The holiday season certainly seems magical … to everyone but the moms who are doing all the work.
According to a 2024 TODAY.com survey, moms bear the brunt of the holiday prep 97% of the time.
This result does not come as a surprise to Canadian singer/songwriter Farideh, who composed the hilariously clever song: “The Magic of the Season is Your Mum.”
“She is Santa and the elves, wrapping your presents, overwhelmed,” Farideh sings. “She’s the chef and cleaner too, making a miracle just for you.”
Farideh tells TODAY.com that until she became a mom, she didn’t realize that “the mystery of the holidays is actually all these moms, like every mom in the world, just pouring out her heart into the people that she loves.” She adds, “It comes at a price for the women who feel like there’s all this pressure for them to make memories and to make magic.”
So how can moms make magic without collapsing under the increased mental load of the holidays? We have some ideas.
You’re right … holidays legitimately increase the workload
Eve Rodsky, bestselling author of “Fair Play,” tells TODAY.com that that “the holidays become an increasing point of tension” among couples based on the assumptions we all make about who will tackle which items on the to-do list.
“Women married to men assume that they’re going to be doing the work that we call kin keeping,” she says.
Kin keeping, or strengthening family bonds, can involve fielding party invitations or strategically planning family visits around naps. “It’s not like the work of laundry or dishes where you can see if they’re piling up,” she adds. “The kin keeping work is extra invisible.”
Amy Wilson, co-host of the popular “What Fresh Hell” podcast and author of the upcoming book of essays “Happy to Help,” says that she always notices the “second-hand anxiety you get from the texts you get from your mother-in-law, your sister, who want gift suggestions before Black Friday.”
Now that her three children are stepping into adulthood, Wilson lets them field these types of questions on their own.
Mommy guilt
In her team’s 10 years of research, Rodsky notes that dads “consistently report to us that they don’t feel guilt and shame.” Moms, on the other hand, “feel punished for it if they don’t show up the way that they’re supposed to,” either by their children, the community or themselves.
She notes that while we can outsource laundry or dishes, we can’t outsource “gifts of love,” like remembering to bring your third graders flowers after the Christmas concert or handmaking a Christmas ornament for Great Aunt Marion.
“Those are all extra pieces of work that women are reporting are falling on them,” Rodsky says.
Is women’s work “unnecessary”?
Rodsky points out that men often say that their wives do “too many unnecessary things.” The biggest offender on this list are holiday cards, dads say.
Though there isn’t a right or wrong about sending holiday cards, Rodsky says that sending holiday cards is a method of connection, especially with those friends or family who don’t use social media.
“There is a really beautiful why behind Christmas cards,” she says, adding that when men say “incredibly condescending” things like this, “it shows that they don’t understand the full picture of what is actually happening at home.”
Wilson already ordered her cards — a Herculean task in and of itself — but then there’s the “putting them in the envelopes, and then licking the envelopes, and then a stamp on the envelope, and then the address in the envelope. They need five or six steps each.”
Though none of this work is necessary or required, it does help keep us connected to loved ones, a perk that dads benefit from but don’t always recognize.
Start planning next December now
Rodsky recommends holiday planning with your partner a year in advance, “when emotion is low and cognition is high.”
But if you haven’t yet started planning for this holiday season, or you are in an imbalanced relationship with one person doing the majority of the work, start small.
She suggests sitting down for coffee with your partner, choosing the top five that cause the most friction and dividing them up. Or, if that is too contentious, you can begin by simply asking each other, “What are three things we want to get out of this holiday season?”
Wilson points out that you can do the same thing with your kids … and you might be surprised by the feedback.
One of her podcast listeners shared that her kids asked to have a Christmas dance party or watch a Christmas movie together. “It wasn’t, like, make 14 kinds of cookies,” she says. “The things that meant the most to the kids were actually lighter lifts than predicted.”
The things that meant the most to the kids were actually lighter lifts than predicted.”
Wilson suggests letting the “Law of Attrition” rule the season: do not restart things that were left behind.
So if you were sold out of the light extravaganza at the zoo or if you ran out of time for the cousins’ gift exchange and nobody complained, maybe those things weren’t important to begin with. Focus your attention elsewhere.
“Dial in on what actually matters to you and your partner and your kids, and not what you should be doing,” says Wilson.
Take care of yourself.
“The antidote to burnout is being consistently interested in your own life,” says Rodsky. “Spend some time caring for yourself. This is more than just the oxygen mask.”
She recommends planning activities you enjoy for the middle of the holiday season to restore your spirit.
“Understand that there’s zero guilt or shame for anything that falls through the cracks,” she says.
And speaking of, should you come to your husband’s rescue if he forgets to buy his mother a gift?
