Christmas is just a load of wifework: discuss

[drspouse]

DH and I have a collaborative approach to Christmas though he tends to want to do less than I do in terms of activities, as our DS needs a bit of structure I usually overrule him.
He writes more Christmas cards than I do as we only do them for elderly relatives who don't have email and he has more of them.
However all family just want me to give them suggestions for presents for the DCs.
And could you just send me a link.
And what does DH want.
Oh can't you just buy it and I'll pay you back. Can't you wrap it too?
And the mums on FB... My goodness. And here too. I bet all the dads are not wrapping up the living room door and moving the elf and buying reindeer food. And working out which relative won't eat smoked salmon canapes and when to get their Ocado slot. And if they'll fit into their slinky dress for the work party.
It's just the whole year of sexism multiplied by 65 million isn't it?

I do it all...I make Christmas happen. DH doesn't care about any of it (but willingly eats the food and opens the presents and takes credit for 'joint' gifts we give)....actually he does wash up.

If I didn't do it all, Christmas would not happen in our house....the only consolation is last year after an exhausting Christmas day my DS17 made me a cup of tea and said 'thanks mum, for this Christmas and every Christmas, you do it all and have always made it so special for us'

Not in my experience. But then Christmas is much more important to dh than to me, so he puts a lot of effort into. That said, it also reflects the way wife-work is generally shared in the JellyHouse.

Though TBH I have heard female friends' and colleagues' frustrations with the the strain of Christmas, and how they often feel overwhelmed by the preparations and too stressed to really enjoy it.

@DulciUke everyone I know seems to think it's normal to send unwrapped presents because they are blooming stingy and won't pay for wrapping. It gets my goat.

Oh lord yes. Dh has cooked Christmas dinner, and will put decorations up. I do everything else. It is a genuine concern of mine that if I wasn't around any more Christmas for the dc would be crap!

FarAwaySheep

Smellies or edibles are a cheap 'something to unwrap', or they can do what I do, cash in a card wrapped up with bows and ribbons.

In this day and age I reckon you could do Christmas really easily if you were so inclined. Buy an artificial tree with LEDs that flash- decorating's done. Buy presents from a site that offers gift wrapping- presents done. Buy pre-prepared food- food's done. Sit back with a mince pie and a wee dram.

Or you can be like me and spend December wrapping and making your own gift labels and spray painting pine cones and home cooking mince pies. It really isn't necessary though. I do it because I enjoy it, that's me, I wouldn't expect anyone else to.

I'm fairly confident my DCs would have a great Christmas if I wasn't here. I was discussing this on Twitter after a dear friend died young and it's probably the recipes I make that they'd miss but DH would buy enough chocolate to make up for it.

I agree in general, but this thread has just made me realize that growing up my dad did quite a lot of the preparation and my parents tended to split tasks to get more done at the same time, so if mum was cooking dad would be setting the table or driving to pick up relatives or shoveling the drive so anyone coming over could actually get parked or running out for anything needed from the shops. They both shopped for gifts, my dad did most of the wrapping because he was better at it than anyone else (he did try to teach me how to do the ribbons but mine never came out as well so I'd make him wrap presents from me) and each year I'd go out at one point with the one to buy gifts for the other. I'm sure my mum still ended up doing more overall with cooking being such a mammoth task but I don't think I realized at the time that my dad's relative lack of put your feet up and let the wife do everything wasn't the norm.

Now my DH does Christmas dinner, cause I don't like doing roasts and the associated stuff. We don't do most of the other stuff because no kids but when the nieces and nephews were younger he did most of the wrapping because again, I'm crap at it. We both do cards for our own families, in terms of gifts we tend to shop together, though I'll usually end up making the final choice on any clothes for the women on either side of the family and he gets extra stuff off and on for his niece and nephew and stashes it prior to actual shopping season.

My nieces and nephews are grown now, but I lived thousands of miles away when they were little. Barely saw them growing up. I had no idea what the little beggars liked and, as, a childless person any idea of what was the in thing that year or what types of books they liked or clothing sizes, or what toys they had already or....well you get the picture. Some guidance was always appreciated. Or, people, can you,know, just buy your kids some useless piece of shit.

Or they could do 10 minutes of research by googling "gift ideas for x year olds", or by going to a toyshop and having a look, or by asking friends what their kids like. It's not rocket science. Or they could just send money, because actually those kids have no idea who they are anyway, so it's hardly going to matter under those conditions. There isn't exactly a meaningful relationship.

Although, to be fair, my complaint is not about that very specific and fairly unusual situation. It's about the family who do actually know the kids and who often have some childrearing experience. They just can't be arsed to put any thought in.

So long as I get most of the wine, I do not care about the rest.
No doors wrapped. No elves. No reindeer food. We make it all about the tree.
Then wine, music, good food and fun.

Let them sulk regardless of who they are.
We do Christmas how we want and if others who don't live here don't like it, they will get over it. There's enough things going on here without thinking about how it impacts so minimally on others. If something doesn't get done because one person hasn't done it when they should, oh well that's for them to deal with.
But I also don't think that one person is responsible for cooking either. I don't want thanks I want your ass up and doing your bit.

Unwrapped presents? Leave them in whatever packing they arrive in.

If I was unwell, and it can happen, they would just have to get on with everything anyway.

And how did I get it this way? I told people what I was doing, they laughed thinking I would just do it anyway. Over 20 years later I still don't do it.

Imagine if your partner was your colleague. Would you always do the work for them and reach the point of it being expected and people even treating you like the colleagues' secretary? Nope so why do people just go along with it their personal lives where it's supposed to be a partnership. And don't even get me started on the partner helping me out nonsense. Doing the odd favour for each other is fine. But expectations and people just following along without changing, no.

It’s pretty split in our household, my husband hated Christmas for many years as he lost both his parents when he was young and so the magic went with them. But then we got together and we have a little boy and one on the way and I absolutely love Christmas and he now really looks forward to it too.
We put the tree up together, we plan presents together, he writes his cards and sorts his presents and I do mine. And he normally does most of the cooking too which is lovely. Mainly because I tend to work at some point over Christmas but he doesn’t.
The only thing he needs more work on is my stocking lol, I spend all year giving him hints but he always forgets or doesn’t listen so he ends up panicking that he doesn’t know what to get! But I’m just happy that we have a lovely time as a family which is the most important bit x

God, yes, thanks for writing it down like that. It’s a shitshow of wife work. Then on Xmas day he’ll put on his chef’s hat, cook the dinner I bought and everyone will coo over what a fucking marvel he is. 😡

DH quite often works Christmas Day so a few years ago we started having the traditional Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. It is me that does all the cooking and Christmas prep generally ( DH has genuinely no interest in anything Christmassy and it wouldn’t happen otherwise) and I found it was a joyous thing to free up Christmas Day. Now we do it most years whether or not he’s home on the day. Lovely late breakfast , presents, Christmas sea swim , easy picky lunch, films and board games and much wine. I really enjoy it and don’t end up knackered and a bit resentful at the end.

I'd say 60/40 in our house.

I do:

• shopping for kids, dh and my family
• wrapping presents for above
• sending cards for above
• I decorate the tree
• organise who we see and when

Dh does:

• shopping for me and his family.
• wrapping presents for above
• sending cards for above
• food shopping
• cooking (he cooks anyway)
• fu@£!ng elf on a bloody shelf and Santa letters

We both do:

• buying tree
• cleaning house

Tbh, DH would happily do more, but I am anal about having the presents look half decent, so I won't let him wrap anything that goes under the tree or to decorate it, as it would look truly awful.

The late, great Deborah Orr was critical of women who martyr themselves at Christmas. She advised women to allow slovenly Christmas celebrations and guaranteed that everyone would be able to enjoy themselves without feeling guilty about female martyrs insisting on doing too much.
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p6wvq

Yep.

Just got to say thanks for starting the thread, drs - had a discussion with DH tonight that has resulted in him sorting Christmas (a bit, anyway) with his family. This is a new record for planning! Hoorah.

I’m a single parent with a DP who doesn’t live with us. We normally do most prep and shopping together, but I inevitably do more as we have christmas in my flat. I don’t mind doing the bit extra, but the thing that winds me up the most is, ‘what does DS want for christmas?’ ’I don’t know, bloody ask him or you think of somet.’ ‘oh, I’ll just give him money then. What do you want for christmas?’ I don’t think I’ve had a christmas present in my adult life that I haven’t asked for, or sent a link for, or bought myself then they’ve transferred the money for. I love thinking of presents for people, and I’m rather good at it if I do say so myself, but nobody ever makes the effort to think of a present for me.

Well, I can't complain really. My husband will generally do whatever I ask him as long as he doesn't think it's positively toxic or hateful and he has at times when I've not been able to. But in the end there are some things he cares not about and would not do if I didn't ask him, and some other things that I am not happy with the way he chooses to do them, and generally I take the view that for stuff I care about that much, I should be responsible for it or satisfied without.
For things that I feel put upon me unreasonably by other's expectations, I should do the emotional work of letting the expectation go if I think its stupid/unnecessary/too much. The latter has really been more freeing than asking him to take over those things.

I blame all this mostly on the consumer model. A lot of the stuff we are supposed to do, that have become expectations, have been invented to get us to spend money. I suspect it's targeted women because they tend to drive that kind of buying, they often control family budgets and feel those social pressures more. There aren't many men I know who would go to the trouble of buying their kids coordinated Christmas pjs each year.

I think it's better to just get rid of most of it, rather than trying to get men to do more of it.

There is a really hilarious short story about this issue of wifework and Christmas, which really is best listened to on audio, called "Dave and the Christmas Turkey" by Stewart McLean.

I don't think it is in mine but it's probably hard to work it out exactly.

DH will go get the tree and the decorations down from the loft. I'll put up the bits and bobs like candles and pictures while he sorts the lights and the tree stand. We'll all decorate it.

DH does the shopping and cooking, I do the washing up.

We sort cards for each side of our families and presents are usually bought by both of us.
I bake the Christmas cake and mincemeat, he'll make the pastry for the mince pies.

We'll usually wrap presents at the same time at the last minute on Christmas eve

We'll both tidy the house but it'll usually be me washing the floors and hoovering and sorting out the toys spread around the house.

My parents definitely are a bit more weighted towards wife work in terms of my DM giving instructions and my DF following them.

There aren't many men I know who would go to the trouble of buying their kids coordinated Christmas pjs each year

And any woman who does should take a long hard look at herself. Either don't do it or do it and stop whinging about it.

I haven't got a shred of sympathy about anyone moaning about Christmas wife- work. None of it's compulsory; most of it's a pointless waste of time and money but if you want to make a rod for your own backs, up to you.

most of it's a pointless waste of time and money but if you want to make a rod for your own backs, up to you.
Bit harsh on the kids though, when Santa doesn’t show, eh?

It's not exactly hard to buy something for your own children but the demented Elf on a Shelf, Christmas Eve box, must buy a present for every member of husband's family, must have a perfect, magical Christmas brigade is just competitive martyrdom.

Love this community, my first post here.

Yes Christmas is a lot of self-imposed work but that is what it takes to create traditions that stand part from the daily grind. I did it for the children and asked DH for specific help so I wouldn't feel resentful. If I hadn't my kids would not have had those magical Christmas mornings and we would not remember "He CAME" with such joy.

But I swear I will forever keep in my heart that I chewed up carrots, spat out and collected the chewed bits, and walked outside at midnight leaving strategic sprinkles of chewed up carrots outside the chimney so my boys would know the reindeer enjoyed their carrot snacks.

What's a Christmas Eve box?