To feel like the burden of Christmas always falls on women?

[Fallingrain]

Just that really. I do a full time job, run a business on the side and I always get so frazzled at this time of year. There is just so much to do. DH isn’t useless but I couldn’t trust him to remember stuff like Christmas jumper day at school. I absolutely accept that I’m very lucky to afford a cleaner and we don’t have financial worries but I still get to Christmas and I feel like I’ve run a marathon. The cards, stockings, school stuff, gifts for family and friends, Christmas food and planning catering etc. It’s all just too much.

It gets my goat a bit that women seem to take it all on in most households. I remember my Mum being exactly the same and I don’t want the kids to just remember Christmas as me getting stressed.

Yup. I have chosen, bought, paid for and wrapped every sodding present and stockings for dcs and family. He only does mine! I decorate the house, prep most of the food ( altho dcs do a lot of this now) and he does very little except the recycling!

Last year I made DH responsible for planning & doing the Christmas food shopping. I said I'd help where needed, but he was to be in charge as I had done it all the year before and I didn't want him to think that that's how it would work every year. To be honest, it was pretty frustrating at times, he asked a million times what recipe I used for X, what ingredients to get for Y, what to do because M&S had sold out of Z (because he left it to the last moment...), but hopefully it will be easier in years to come.

@Buddytheelf85

Well, don't do it...or do a reasonable amount of work and make sure your partner knows what's expected of them. If it doesn't get done..so what?

People on Mumsnet say this a lot, and it is sensible advice to a point, but it becomes a lot more difficult when you have children (Christmas or not).

My problem - and the problem many women have - is that I can’t allow our children or our dog to suffer because of my husband’s laziness. And deep down he knows that, and takes advantage of it.

So I’m perfectly happy to leave my husband’s washing to him, and leave his family’s gifts and cards to him, etc. I always did that. No change there. The problem is splitting the work of caring for other people. I don’t want my child to be the only one without a Christmas jumper on Christmas jumper day, or the only one who doesn’t have a gift for the teacher. I want him to have clean clothes. I want him to have presents on Christmas Day and a Christmas dinner. Similarly, I don’t want our dog to suffer because he hasn’t been walked because my husband can’t be arsed to remember, to catch fleas and worms because he hasn’t had his medicine, or to starve because noone’s remembered to feed him.

You may well ask ‘why did you have kids with this man?’ and it’s a reasonable question. The answer is - he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself before we had children. And he still is good at taking care of himself. Just not anyone else.

I get what you're saying, and I agree to an extent, but it depends VERY much on your definition of "suffering".

I'm not advocating wilful child neglect, but if you set yourself really high success criteria, then you inevitability end up an impossible task list and feel like a failure for doing anything less.

I am an extreme minimalist for expectations. If something can be deferred, done simply, outsourced, skipped or compressed, I will take that option if it means that I can stay on top over all.

I see women tearing their hair out on here over things I don't give a second thought to - or even a first one. I often think my parents forgot to socialise me as a female and am thankful for it.

It's the same here. I do all the shopping, decorating, card writing. We do the big food shop together. If I left it to him, I don't think the kids would get more than a couple of presents and unsure if he'd do a stocking for each of them.
It is hard trying to think of everything, but he has enough on his plate with work, and I really don't mind doing it.

I think you chose to do all this work nobody is making you.

Given that Christmas seems to be largely a round of gift exchange, why do we fetishise it as a huge celebration for anyone but children?

I only say this because, this year, there are no little children to give/make fun for Christmas...everyone in my circle is an adult, even the youngest members are over 20 and don't believe in Santa. So it becomes for me a reason to contact the people on the periphery of my life, that I don't see everyday because they live in other countries on the other side of the world. I value it just for staying in contact with all the people I have met and liked and swapped contacts. Some are forever, but not all, but it's wonderful to have a quick update from a person you met briefly and liked instantly but never achieved a deep relationship with, but might have, under different circumstances.