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 feel pressure from within myself to give my children the kind of Christmases I remember having myself. Though I'm sure everything has been "supersized" since then.

You really aren't after an analysis. You have been given plenty of comments along the line of the one below.

The entire point of wife work is that society has created an expectation that women will do it but there's no reason why they should

I don't think it's unsisterly to point out that the 'wifework' around Christmas is optional. Recognising that women in RL doesn't shoulder all these unfeasible expectations is surely the first step in realising you can stop it too

You seem more keen on some sort of idea that society must change; structures must change whilst ignoring that change about cutting out Christmas crap really must start at home with individuals.

I’d quite like the change to start with school tbh.

Christmas at home doesn’t start til mid Dec at the very earliest and is incredibly low key by most standards, but DC will be learning carols from as soon as they go back after half term, there’ll be the xmas fair, Christmas jumper day, bake sale, parties (food crowd sourced to parents), nativity, carol concert, cards for 30xclassmatesxnumberofDC, blah blah blah. All of which creates wifework. Which I’ll do because I’m in charge of ‘school stuff’.

A feminist analysis and suggestions for how to change society.

It's fundamentally a problem of consumerism. The only way I know to try and beat consumerism is to opt out as much as you can, and encourage groups you are involved in to opt out. Extended family for example, and schools are a really good idea as well.

The more people see that it is possible to opt out of a lot of it, the more people will, because so many feel the same way. It's not really the kind of thing where you can talk about legislative change of some kind, and even most institutions pushing Christmas stuff do so because the people in them feel it's needed.

womanaf

Yup, except maybe the songs. It's the lot of musicians of all kinds to always be preparing one holiday ahead. But schools really just do too much.

Wow this is interesting.

I really have never felt any pressure from my children and we have a good christmas where we as a family enjoy ourselves.
We share the whole holiday, right down to the washing up, kids involved from an early age.
No carol concerts as not religious, but go to school cathedral concerts as have to bring dd home.
Extended family are local and we visit or they do.
As for Octobermas, nobody would get me looking now, whoever they were.

I guess I'm trying to work out why I don't feel like other women on the thread and have managed not to get involved with conditioning and expectations in this respect.

In addition to what Arnold said, there's a lot of family of origin stuff in there. Like, my dad pulled his weight, so I started off with the expectation that any future partner would too. My DH is the child of divorced parents and from a different culture, so his Christmas traditions were different to start with and his (very feminist) mum has always done mostly the bits she actually likes and insisted that the stuff she doesn't but everyone wants to happen be shared, so she bakes because she likes baking and every year friends and family get something delicious that's baked from here either in lieu of or in addition to their presents, but the one year she had been sick and was feeling rubbish she didn't do it, and another year when I first met DH and was with them over Christmas she was super busy so she did it but everyone else helped. Her kids want a turkey and trimmings, they help to cook it, and shopping was made into a list and shared among them when they still lived at home. She likes decorating the tree so she does that, but she hates wrapping so someone else does that and she only wraps their personal gifts. And now we do a blended thing where we kept the bits of both our childhood Christmases that we cared about and dropped the rest. He does the roast and veg because I don't like roasting things, I usually make a crumble for dessert because it's cold and it's nice to have something hot but I never did like Christmas pudding. This all worked out pretty easily because my DH already came from a family where his pulling his weight was assumed, so really his mother had already done the work of turning him into a functional human rather than a lazy arsehole and I benefited from that. If I'd have married a man who'd been brought up to expect to put his feet up while the women ran around making things special for him there would probably have been a lot more conflict. I suppose some people would say, well, that's a choice too, but how much do you really know about how a potential partner handles all that stuff before you're married? I'd like to hope I'd have noticed expecting to be waited on hand and foot tendencies and noped out of the relationship at that point, but what if you didn't notice until after the wedding?

I think if the pressure is coming from within your own family, as in parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents etc that's when it's toughest to push back against because they may well retaliate by having a massive strop, or by martrying themselves and letting it be known that it's your fault. My dad's family can be like this (honestly not sure how he turned out so well, some of his siblings are bloody awful) and every major event that happens makes me glad that I don't live anywhere near them, so they can strop if they like and I can just choose not to pick up the phone or answer emails. If I was there I'd do the same, but then they'd strop at my dad and make his life miserable instead.

AIBU -to kill my partner?

He's sat on the sofa sniffling and claiming he's got the flu. He hasn't. His sniffs don't even have enough snot to sniff-it's dry sniffing. He's huffing and puffing and acting like a martyr.
His head, arms and legs are also hurting if anyone cares to know.
Someone tell me not to, or I might be in the papers tomorrow 😬

Drabarni and others who don’t feel any pressure - what if, let’s say, school does a Christmas jumper day. Don’t you feel pressure to organise jumpers for your DC? Or will they not care about joining in? Mine would care. That’s what I mean by pressure - not that they ask but I know they’d be sad to miss out.

I wear my Oscar the Grouch Xmas tee a lot starting in November up until my Bday (a few days before Xmas). I hate 90% of holiday songs. I sound cranky 🤣

Listening to Barbara Streisand's 1967 Christmas album: www.amazon.com/Christmas-Album-Barbra-Streisand/dp/B0000024TV?tag=mumsnetforu03-21 while stringing stale popcorn for garland before my brother would eat it and staying up late into the night wrapping/assembling my brother's gifts with my mom on Xmas Eve are my best childhood Xmas memories.

DH and I are atheists so Xmas is about end of year celebration with some traditional rituals thrown in. Our friends celebrate and include us in their holiday celebrations whether Hanukkah, Christmas, winter solstice, etc. - we bring dishes, celebrate time with loved ones, and help clean up.

DH and I share in all of our decorating (minimalist) from outdoor to indoor. We make an event of each decorating endeavor - house lights/get the tree and water it one night, indoor decorating and tree decorating the next night. We drink cocktails, dance, sing and decorate.

We buy presents independently for each other - DH knows me well and puts a lot of thought in and I listen throughout the year noting things he mentions he'd like to have (cheat sheet b/c he mentions too much to remember). We shop for gifts for our parents as a team and wrap our own parent's presents and we take them to the post together (it is a ritual that ends with lunch out). We make an evening of wrapping presents for each other - we box them in separate rooms and convene in our Florida room for wrapping/embellishing bragging about our wrapping skills as we go. We fill stockings for each other and our big dog babies every year (the dogs love it as much as we do). The stocking stuffers are not Xmas branded items but are practical, edible, or whimsical (e.g. tennis balls/bones/toys for dogs; fancy chocolates, jewelry, homemade art, skin care, iTunes/Xbox cards, movie tickets, etc. for us).

We shop for food, I prep/cook, he cleans. Xmas dinner is 10ish homemade items from turkey to cranberry sauce. We have a galley kitchen - I am small in stature with big feet and he's a giant bag with giant feet so we can't work in the space together (if I want to keep my toes). He sweeps/vacuums/dusts et al while I cook and clean up the prep area. He sets the table, we eat, and then he cleans up after the meal.

I make the pies, he cleans up, and then he eats pie late at night and gets heartburn. I administer heartburn meds post cleanup in anticipation and heading off of pouting.

If it isn't 50/50 it is damn close.

I grew up watching traditional families have holidays where the moms/grandmas/aunts ran around like maniacs trying to do/be everything for everyone while dads/grandpas/uncles sat on their asses and it pissed me off. So I refuse to repeat what I witnessed.

However, DH and I are at the 25yr mark with no kids and 42yrs/44yrs old so maybe not having kids is Wifework Teflon (for most Wifework)?

twomadefour

OMG! A sick man! Alert the press! 🤣

My DH is mostly awesome except when he's sick or thinks he's sick... and then and then, well nevermind.

My thoughts are with you, the force (patience) is with you, do not stray to the dark side. 🤪

I'm intrigued as to what 'society' comprises of and how it changes when apparently women sit outside of and distinct from it, like hapless creatures with no agency?
It infantilises women and treats them as incapable of learning and understanding about the world and unable to change.

If socialisation is so powerful that women are utterly unable to resist it or deviate from it over the course of their life, then it also means that men are utterly unable to resist their socialisation. It works both ways. You can't claim women are incapable of changing their socialisation but men somehow magically should be able to do so. If we are humans with similar brains then both sexes are deeply conditioned by their socialisation. Which means it is completely unreasonable to expect any improvement or change from men because they are also locked into their socially conditioned mindsets. And why should men change a system that benefits them so greatly in the first place anyway!? It would be foolish for them to do so.

Men are socially conditioned to deeply fear being mocked and shamed for being 'hen pecked', 'under the wife's thumb' and being a 'pussy' and not 'man enough' if they do everything a woman says. The shame for not living up to socially prescribed notions of masculinity and manhood should sufficiently ensure most men will feel very reluctant to change even if they might know on an intellectual level that they should. It's not a conscious thing, just like it isn't a conscious decision for women to cave into the pressures of femininity and the role that is placed on them.

So if neither women nor men can change their socialisation, I guess we can expect nothing in society to change and things to carry on as they are indefinitely. I don't see the point of feminism in that case. It's just a load of hot air.

Individual level versus societal level are not mutually exclusive spheres. They are interdependent and each influences the other.
Sure, there is a place for wider, structural changes instead of every individual woman doing her own thing. Better legislation around maternity leave and state subsidised childcare are good examples.
But you cannot legislate for every aspect of people's private lives. Legislation only goes so far.

You can't have laws banning women from buying matching Christmas jumpers for every family member and stressing over it. That's where the individual level comes in. For me, feminism involves getting women to become aware of and understanding their socialisation and realise that they can change and modify their behaviour and decisions. It's not easy and there might be pushback from others, but it's about slowly building our confidence and resilience in the face of opposition. Women can learn from one another that they do have agency and things aren't inevitable. And by learning to hold better boundaries, then it means men have to also start pulling their weight. Children will see how parents behave and carry on those values (and hopefully improve on them) in the next generations.

There's no one size fits all strategy, and every woman changes at her own pace and based on her circumstances. But the biggest realisation is knowing that change is possible. Every tiny act that goes against peer pressure, like even deciding to no longer send out Christmas cards to every relative and their dog, builds up the ability to resist caving into unnecessary norms and trends and taking on more stress. Maybe with time, that growing confidence will allow for other, bigger personal changes... Who knows.

It's important for women to develop self awareness and analyse their behaviours and how that might impact on their lives. You can campaign for big, societal changes while also trying out smaller ones on a more personal level.

*I'd quite like the change to start with school tbh.

Christmas at home doesn’t start til mid Dec at the very earliest and is incredibly low key by most standards, but DC will be learning carols from as soon as they go back after half term, there’ll be the xmas fair, Christmas jumper day, bake sale, parties (food crowd sourced to parents), nativity, carol concert, cards for 30xclassmatesxnumberofDC, blah blah blah. All of which creates wifework. Which I’ll do because I’m in charge of ‘school stuff’.*

Can I just say I agree wholeheartedly with most of this. I'm a primary teacher. It whips children up into a frenzy of excitement, makes for a disjointed timetable, ears inyo learning time. There's just too much Christmas stuff going on in most schools, I suppose because heads believe parents want it, and the fundraising opportunities. It needs to be spaced out to be organised properly. Fairs in November - far too early really though.

Learning carols though--that takes time especially if they are new to the children. You can't just cobble a performance together the day before. Younger kids especially need a lot of practice to get it right for the performance to parents.

A feminist analysis and suggestions for how to change society.

I really like the post from *Nonnymouse1337^ about the balance between individual agency and the external pressures to conform. It is interesting that the posters who feel least affected by Christmas wife work are those who have created a mix between shared traditions and their own twist.

I like the idea of calling out people who make negative comments about what women do/don’t do but we should also highlight the effect of consumerism.

Years ago at a Weightwatchers meeting, the leader pointed out to us the the sell by dates on lots of Christmas food was actually before Christmas so shops wanted us to buy (and eat) extra stuff before 25 December. That sort of analysis that applies deeper thinking to everyday lives is incredibly effective I think.

I think it's more like socialisation runs deep, so recognising it how affects you is actually a significant step, and you don't need to beat yourself) up if you fail to make all the changes you want to see , share with others when you do fix something , especially becuase it normalises / socialises your behaviour making it easier for others to do the same ) , accept it will take generations , and recognise the changes that have already happened

I think society is slowly changing - I remember being a smartarse in a maths class in the mid 80s, when we were doing a problem that began "your mother wishes to cook a Christmas turkey for 27 people". I muttered that no she didn't, my Dad did the cooking, and got a collective SIOB from 30 other people that my family was so odd. I don't think that would happen any more.

But I also think, as someone said above, this is hugely based in your family of origin. My DM's family has always revolved around keeping one individual in each generation happy, and that individual has always previously been male so caring / Christmas / family events have always fallen to women (not so in my generation and I'm determined to break the pattern going forward). In my DF's family, his mother had poor health from her mid-30s (the product of poverty growing up and then rationing during and after the war) and so my grandfather, father and uncle took the burden of everything off her as far as possible.

What's come down to me, therefore, is the idea that Christmas is about protecting people I love from stress (which is dangerous) while also making it special for everyone and revolving around the Special Individual Who Must Not Be Troubled By Real Life. That is hugely toxic in terms of expectations placed on me, and Christmas has been a very stressful, unhappy time for the last 20 years or so. Add the baggage DH also carries from his FOO and it becomes a proper flashpoint.

This year will be different after lots of soul-searching and discussion by both of us; but I don't think we can blame the patriarchy per se. More, our individual families and circumstances, rooted in the patriarchal attitudes of past generations. And my mother and grandmothers would all describe themselves as feminists, as would I.

I think if the pressure is coming from within your own family, as in parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents etc that's when it's toughest to push back against

This 100 times. I'm obviously not wishing death and destruction on our extended families but they are the source of a huge amount of the "wifework" that comes my way. Though so too are my (and they are mine not ours) efforts/expectations/madness in relation to the kids. He and I on our own would be fine. And probably far far away.

But Christmas isn’t work. Christmas is fun. That’s why I do it, not because of expectations. If I didn’t enjoy it, I’d do less, and it’d be a much smaller event.

We’re pretty balanced with Christmas except for the sodding thank you cards afterwards. My husband won’t do them but I feel obligated. It’s really annoying! Possibly he would write a few if thrust in front of him, but I have to get them all ready. Grrr

Not in response to any one particular poster, but as I said in my OP I don't find things are too uneven in our house. But just as the answer to "women get paid less" isn't "all women should ask for a pay rise" I also don't think the answer to "women do more of the domestic work" is "just say no".

Consumerism does target men and women differently. That's a good place to start.

And these long lists of evenly shared practical tasks don't really capture the mental load.

maybe not having kids is Wifework Teflon (for most Wifework)?

Yes this is the case for me. Never had any problems dividing things 50/50 or with equality of the sexes until we had DC.

As to the poster above who said if women can’t overcome socialisation, why should we expect men to. Well the difference is that for women, breaking with social expectations generally means doing less for other people (which will be disapproved of/will disappoint children and others) whereas for men, breaking with social convention generally means doing more for others (which will be praised). So I think it’s a lot easier for men to break with social convention, there will be no disappointment or judgment if they take on some of the wifework. They just don’t want to.

Oh yes, radicalised by motherhood here, and I didn't even give birth.

Hmm. If I were single and no longer a wife, I’d still have to do the Christmas work I do now plus his share for the children.

So, is it really wifework? Or is it more motherwork?

But Christmas isn’t work. Christmas is fun

Depends on your definition of fun and what is expected of you. I don't think cooking for large numbers and clearing up afterwards is fun. One Christmas day, I counted that my dishwasher had been on eight times! It was very tedious...thank fuck for the dishwasher or I'd have lost my mind.