Hermione Grangers's S.P.E.W., the Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare, is unfortunately not an option.
It’s the holiday season, and if you’ve been reading, you probably know I’ve been baking up a storm. Tis the season for it, and for shopping, wrapping, decorating, writing holiday cards and letters. And some other stuff I’m sure I’m forgetting.
But here’s the deal: I bake, but I don’t do the resultant dishes. That’s the Dude’s contribution (the time is still not perfectly equal, but still). I shop for the Dude and my family, he shops for me and for his family. We wrap what we buy. We split up cards and letters. Early on, I was adamant about not becoming our family’s social secretary, in no small part because he has a large extended family with whom he is close, and I knew it would be a shitload of work–and if he’s close, then he should be close, right?
I know that I might be in a minority with this arrangement, because the holiday cards we’ve received thus far–especially those from people of a generation ahead of us–have clearly been chosen, addressed, and signed by the women of the family. (I talked about this already here.) And I know that the gifts I’ll get from Mama and Papa Dude (and Gram & Gramps Dude) will all be the work of Mama.
This is the case for most social-family work, but the heat really turns up at Christmas, because even for people who are completely secular about it, it’s so much about ideas of home and family and nostalgia. And nostalgia, if you haven’t figured it out already, is about conservatism, and retro attitudes, and hanging onto traditions particularly after those traditions (which were, after all, borne out of practical needs) have outlived their usefulness. What I’m saying is nostalgia is no friend to women. Ever.
And so the holiday season, with the unending attention to making a “good ol’ fashioned Christmas” is a season upon which I must cast a hairy eyeball. At the same time that I make a point of thanking all my female relatives for all the work they’re doing to make their families comfortable and happy at significant cost (financial, time- and energy-wise) to themselves.
I’m hopeful that this is changing, and I’m definitely invested in doing what I can to push for this change in my own family. A lot of that is thinking about what works for us, for where and who we are now, not who we’re supposed to be, or who we wish we were. So this year it means we’re sending out holiday postcards to many people, rather than full cards and letters. And it means that we’re not buying and decorating a tree this year. And it means that we’re scaling back gifts, too.
It’s possible that this means we (or I, as Elf-in-Chief) will get some criticism, but so be it. I don’t think that means I’m the one lacking the spirit of the season.
Ooh, this is very timely for me. My grandmother and my stepmother (both Christian) were the queens of Christmas in my family—big-ass trees with lots of ornaments, wreaths, candles in the windows, holiday cards, decorations out the wazoo. But my grandmother died in September, and my stepmother is very ill and incapacitated these days, so when I go back to Virginia this year, I suspect there will be no Xmas decorations.
And yes, this is clearly because the menfolk in the family have never taken it on themselves to do any of that elf-work, and likely wouldn’t even know where to begin. I suspect they will miss all that festivity, but not enough to try to replicate it themselves.
As for me, I send out some holiday cards, buy presents for my family and that’s it. I’m Jewish, so I don’t celebrate Christmas, but I absolutely LOVE Christmas trees and ornaments, and would have no philosophical problem having a tree in my house—it’s a pagan tradition anyway—except that it would fall to me to buy the tree, haul it home, decorate/water it and get rid of it after it dries out and I am just too lazy. Maybe when I’m rich enough to hire some elves…
My daughter will be back from school on Friday. I’m going to put the tree decoration thing on her, since she’s not getting a p/t while she’s off. I need to think about putting in on my son too, but he’s not off from school yet, being in HS.
As for cards, I sent all my friends electronic cards last year. I was pretty clear it was replacing the physical card. The only ones getting those are some people in my parent’s generation (80′s) who don’t do email.
I have the same approach to extended family stuff in my relationship.
What’s interesting is how guilty I still feel every so often. I know that it isn’t my job, my SO completely agrees that his family is his responsibility…and yet there’s still this little voice in the back of my head that pops up every so often to say “you’re shirking your duties!”
It is slowly growing quieter over time, though. Hopefully one day it will go away altogether.
Ooh, timely for me because it’s the year of my husband’s every five year huge (120 people) Christmas reunion. And there are a thousand little pieces of things to do (find the special stockings! Where are the plaid vests for photos? Gift exchange gifts!) that I was adamant were not my job. It’s not my family, I think it’s all a little cult-like, and I too was determined to be the social director.
And a lot of these things, for which I am not responsible, didn’t get done. And I feel awful! Even though I don’t get the stupid reminder emails. Even though Husband agrees it’s not my job. Even though with a new baby (youngest reunion attendee), everyone’s going to cut us some slack. I’m wracked with guilt, and have to stop myself from cleaning out the hall closet, just in case our cult-vests are buried in there.
Also, Becky, that happens a lot when a woman gets older, sick, or dies. The family either gives up the Christmas magic, or expects a daughter to maintain it. In my family, though, it was my stepdad who did presents (my mom is Jewish) and when he died, she started doing the bare minimum to keep his family happy. No tree for her house!
“And I know that the gifts I’ll get from Mama and Papa Dude (and Gram & Gramps Dude) will all be the work of Mama.”
Yep. My manpanion and I haven’t gotten to the point of buying joint gifts. He does his family, and I do my family — although I do like to bring something small for his parents if I’m going to be at his family’s house over the holidays, mostly because I feel awkward “butting in” to their family celebrations without bringing anything. But his step-siblings, aunts and uncles, etc. are his responsibility alone. For the two of us, our holiday celebrations have thus far consisted of me lighting Hannukah candles about 4 nights out of the 8 (…I’m lazy), but we are planning on spending a night at a bed and breakfast as our present to each other. No mess, no decorating, no work except the T ride there…I’m really looking forward to it.
By contrast, I know for a 100% fact that every single gift my parents give was chosen, purchased, and wrapped by my mother. She does a great job — funny personalized tags, really appropriate and welcome gifts choices, etc. But I have to admit that I find it a little amusing for my father to complain that gifts he gets from e.g. my uncle (who doesn’t seem to have any concept of what a straight computer programmer might want that’s not sports-related) aren’t very suitable for him when he’s never gone shopping for the person in question either.
@baraqiel: Yep, my father has never bought a single holiday/birthday present for his four children in his life. My stepmom 100% handled all of that. In fact, my dad often forgets birthdays unless reminded by her. But since my stepmom LOVES buying presents, it worked out well (at least until she got sick).
My stepdad is a good shopper and gift-giver, though, but he seems to be anomalous among the men of his generation. I’ve concluded that buying gifts is one of those many situations where women have been trained to take it on ourselves and men have no problem abdicating responsibility.
Being treated as the social secretary of the family just because I happen to be married to their son, is my BIGGEST pet peeve with my in-laws. I could write a novel about how much it annoys me to be unwillingly forced into that role (something that has happened to his brother’s wife as well) even though I have flat-out said “Please talk to YOUR SON about HIS PLANS.”
I would have said my family did a good job of not making house-elves of the women during the holiday season – Dad did more than his share of light hanging and tree cutting and decorating and card writing – up until this year. My mother will be with us for Christmas to help with the toddler/newborn and so my dad & brother have decided not to bother with a tree. Or a meal. Or stockings. Because without Mom around to bake the cookies and bring out the holiday spirit they just can’t be bothered.
This is one thing I was really freaked out about re: marriage. While I would say I generally end up doing more of the elf work, like, cards are my thing if we do them (decided to skip this year), hubs takes care of his family, and I take care of mine. If we are going to see his family (our families are in different states), he makes the arrangements. I think a major part of the reason I end up doing more of the decorating/baking/cards/etc. is because I’m an unemployed grad student with time on my hands, and he’s a medical fellow working 80+ hours a week, so I try to cut some slack. This year, I got the flu from hell and have been sick the last 10 days. Our house is not decorated and I’ve obviously done no baking, but hubs has been kicking ass in the gift-buying department.
It’s just SO HARD to resist the pressure to be the family elf. Because I’m the only one who feels JUDGED about it. Hubs honestly is too tired from work to really care if we ever find the Christmas ornaments that disappeared in the move. And I’m too weak to go rummaging in the attic. And yet, guess which one of us feels sheepish and the need to apologize to people who come over that we have an undecorated fake tree in the corner of our living room? And even though I know the judging is really not coming from people who love me– seriously, the friend who brought me cake last night probably didn’t give a rip about the naked tree because she loves me– I’ve apparently got a patriarchal holiday monster living in my head, making me feel bad that it is NOT “beginning to look a lot like Christmas” in my house, not even a little bit.
I will also say that I’ve really tried hard to resist my inner patriarchal holiday monster– we take care of our own family members’ birthday presents. This means that hubs’ family members often receive their gifts late, and for some reason, I worry that they think this means *I* am falling down on something that is somehow *my* job. I finally stopped freaking out about it when my SIL sent us an anniversary card a month late. Obviously none of his family is doing any better than we are at the timeliness of celebrations. I just have to stop letting that voice tell me it makes *me* look bad. It’s on him if things are late.
“What I’m saying is nostalgia is no friend to women. Ever.”
WRONG! I’m nostalgic for Buffy the Vampire Slayer! So there!
Anyway. I am torn about this. My partner is very ambivalent about holidays in general, and doesn’t really feel the compulsion to buy presents for his parents and so on (also, I’m the one bringing home the bacon–or, um, seitan, so to speak–as he’s unemployed, and doesn’t want to spend my money). But I do! And it’s important to my family that I give them a gift from “us,” even though they don’t really acknowledge the seriousness of our relationship because we’re not married.
My real problem is psychologically committing to telling my family (in my brain) to fuck off with their bullshit, a process I’m working on.
I don’t want to become the family-social director/holiday tradition keeper. But I am also aware that there is a shit ton of stuff that I resist doing because I do not want to fall into complacent gender roles. I make sure to never do more than 50% of the cooking/cleaning, because once that shit starts it’s so easy to slide into unequal, fucked up labor division.
But the result of that is basically that I do hardly any of the cooking and cleaning. Really, I almost never cook (I make the coffee in the morning, he makes ridiculously gourmet meals catering to my dietary needs every night), and I am only in charge of cleaning the bathroom because he doesn’t really know how and I’m hardcore about my bathroom germ level. He basically does everything else. Which, of course, is partially because he’s unemployed and I’m in my first year of an intense PhD program, and also in the middle of finals (doo dee doo dee doo Harpyness-distraction…).
It’s frustrating to find the balance between “I won’t do this because I am not Your Little Woman and Never Will Be and That’s a Gender Role and I’m Scared Of Falling Into The Trap My Mother Fell Into, what with Taking Care of my dad despite a rhetoric of equal labor division,” and “You do the cooking and the cleaning, I’ll just sit here and read Shakespeare.” It’s uncomfortably close to some Mona Lisa Smile grad-student/wife dynamic here. (And, yes, we’re living entirely on my graduate student income at the moment.) And it isn’t really less fucked up–well, yes, it is less fucked up, but it isn’t not fucked up that we’ve fallen into this pattern in which he takes care of everything domestical and I get an education.
And it’s all compounded by the fact that all the shirking of duties I do, whether from laziness or business (like cooking/cleaning, but also gift-buying/holiday preparation) make me feel immensely guilty, both because I’m playing the role I’ve so frequently despised and derided (“take care of me, wifey”) AND because my gender socialization is telling me that I’m extra extra bad for not cleaning my house/keeping it nice/buying his parents a nice gift. But I’m scared that the correction of the former is really a way for me to justify the submission to the latter.
But fuck it because I’m just going to be making hot fudge for everyone I know and I’m going to give a jar to his parents. Once finals are over. But now: goodbye, I must go write a paper about THE PATRIARCHY (for reals).
@baraqiel: I didn’t realized you noticed! *grin*
Even though Judaism has many home-based holidays, we don’t have the kind of massive, inter-family logistics Christmas requires. Passover can be logistically complicated, but you’re only responsible for your own home, and no major gift-giving is involved. I always say that I’m grateful we don’t celebrate Christmas, because if we did, Mr MM would be on the roof the day after Halloween and we’d be the spectacle of the neighborhood.
My family gives gifts at holiday time and birthdays; my husband’s, less so. I enjoy shopping and wrapping, but I don’t do it for Mr MM’s family, and I wouldn’t expect him to do it for mine. It may indeed be a generational thing, as Mr MM is not a good or happy shopper, and my dad never shopped either. But one of my brothers is an attentive and lavish shopper, and our son is a good gift giver too. There must be women who are the primary gift shoppers for their families and aren’t good at it, though.
My husband doesn’t like the holidays much. I adore them. I also have 2 kids, and feel the pressure to pull off ALL the holidays myself. Some years I have raged against the inequity, some years I have happily done it myself. Needless to say, holidays are pared down events at our house.
My kids (2 boys) are finally old enough however, that this year they did ALL of the Christmas decorating themselves with me just facilitating (here is the ornament bin, here is the next color branches for the tree). They are learning that it is fun AND it takes work, but that they CAN do it.
I told dh when we got married that he was responsible for his own family of origin’s cards for various occasions, and gifts, were his responsibilities. Guess what? His family gets no cards or gifts. I’ve got enough trouble keeping up my own social network without dealing with his.
I always feel weird about this one. I love the holidays. I love shiny things, and silly music, and all the little trappings and social events and whatnot. My SO enjoys them, but doesn’t care much one way or the other. I feel like I can’t very well expect someone who doesn’t give a damn to bake the cookies or send the cards or decorate the tree, you know? And he doesn’t really see the point of giving gifts or sending cards, generally speaking. And I LOVE his family. They are people that I would (and do) spend time with and form relationships independently of my relationship with him. I just don’t feel good telling him that they’re his problem, when I want them to have some demonstration of my affection. And if I don’t do anything, nobody will. I either feel like the social secretary, or the jerk. Like I’m either betraying The Cause, or cutting off my nose to spite my face.
Seriously, how did CHRISTMAS become so gendered?
My father is actually an obsessively nuts present buyer. He loves it. So much so that he and i were banned from being near shops together at christmas in case we bankrupted the family together.
So in our case, my dad will turn up in New York next week with his bizarre presents and my mum will turn up with her more sensible presents.
The same applies to cards, they often send out their own individual christmas cards because my mum likes one and my dad likes another and they refuse to back down…
As for our house, we’ll buy the tree this weekend (any earlier and my children will kill it) and then we will play lots of Johnny Cash and Irish songs and decorate it badly, the whole family, husband included.
Cards we always mean to send and always forget to because we are disorganised.
Presents, my husband buys for his family, I buy for mine but he’s always saying oh I thought your mum would like this and he was pretty strong on what he wanted for the kids and went off and got them. Generally I buy the books for christmas and the stocking fillers, he does the other presents.
I didn’t grow up in a house where a woman’s role was social secretary because my mum is anti social and my dad very social so I’ve never really had the feeling that women were in charge of presents or cards.
If anything my husband manages our social network far more than me – he still talks to my friends on email and by phone for example and makes arrangements when we go back to the UK where as I can’t really be arsed to talk to anyone and wouldn’t really notice if i failed to see people in the UK. I love them all but like my mum I’m the anti social one married to a social butterfly.
So I have a question. Non-US harpies, is Christmas in other countries the way it is here? Is there the same amount of gift giving? The same emphasis on decorating and baking and so forth?
In the UK it’s a bigger holiday I think because it’s the only family get together as there’s no Thanksgiving.
But yeah there’s a tree and decorations and christmas cards and stockings and presents on christmas day or eve. Also I grew up Catholic so obviously it was a fairly big deal religiously as well with midnight mass on christmas eve.
Plus there’s a big christmas lunch/dinner which is usually Turkey with trimmings (although very different trimmings from US Thanksgiving so no marshmallows or sweet potatoes, thank goodness from my point of view) and then the day after is Boxing Day which is also a national holiday.
Actually its not uncommon for some people to be off work from Christmas eve until January 2nd (in Scotland its Jan 3rd as the 2nd is also a holiday) so I’d say its the biggest holiday of the year in the UK.
emilyanne, can you find crackers in NYC?
Growing up, it was really my dad that drove the Christmas celebrations, especially the cooking, baking and tree decorating. Present shopping was done by both mum and dad. My dad being from an eastern European background, Christmas Eve was the family meal and presents. However given that practically of the relatives (from both the matro and patro sides) live overseas, it was mum, dad, and all of us kids, and our Grandfather when he lived with us.
When my parents divorced, as kids we went to dad’s on Christmas Eve, and did a Christmas lunch with mum. As we got older presents were optional. The Christmas lunch at mum’s became a time for all of us kids to catch up with each other, as not everyone went to dad’s.
Now, I prefer not to celebrate Christmas, and will often not visit family at this time. I don’t do a tree, cards, et al. But I do send a package with decorations to 3 of my family’s homes (2 sisters and my mum), so that they can name one of the decorations after me, and that’s my avatar for Christmas.
I find that even in my low key celebrating family that some of my siblings have expectations of how the day will go at mum’s, but never share them, mix in alcohol, and somehow there’s some family drama that links back to some expectation that wasn’t met and never said.
I usually go camping at this time of year (in Australia it’s perfect weather!) so there is no mobile coverage, internet, etc. And I enjoy this time of year relaxing by bushwalking, bad surfing, swimming, reading, drawing, sleeping, eating bbq food made by me (or the SO)…
@MM -with great difficulty but I did manage to eventually.
@MM in Spain there’s no Santa Claus. Instead kids get presents from the 3 kings on Jan. 6. So one year as a child we spent xmas there, and that’s when I realized there’s no Santa Claus.
Also, they make nativity scenes out of chocolate there. I know it sounds like a plot line out of Curb Your Enthusiasm… http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4007/5164370530_fe61166a72_z.jpg, but it is 100% true.
We have a pretty good division of labor around the holidays. I send cards to people I want to send them to, he sends them to people he wants to send them to. I went so far as to get a new address book that doesn’t contain the addresses of any of “his” people. So he also maintains contact information for them. I do write his name on the cards I send, provided the people I’m sending them to know him. He does the same for me.
He is responsible for gifts for his family, and for choosing and procuring some gifts for our son. I always HATED opening gifts that my step-dad was seeing for the very first time, even though they were ostensibly from him. And he will wrap those gifts, and likely some that I chose and purchased.
I have been adamant that I am not the card-holiday-gift-birthday-appointment-secretary for our family. Of course, my side of the family is the bigger-there’s-always-a-damn-birthday-around-the-corner side, so I keep track of most stuff by default.
This kind of thing – not limited to Christmas, but through the year – was one of the biggest issues in the 10-year relationship with my ex. He was always perfectly happy to do stuff when asked – but he always had to be asked, and the mental effort of organising the household was always, in his head, my job. This was fine when I wasn’t working (when we moved in together I left my job and relocated, so was out of work and he was supporting me for a while until I found a job) but it somehow continued when we were both working full time and was the cause of a lot of friction – especially when he called me boring because I had no mental energy left for fun.
And yes, I always seemed to be in charge of present buying (birthday and Christmas) for his family. I bitched (on the principle of the thing) but did it, because 1) I like choosing and buying thoughtful gifts, and 2) as commented above, I knew them well enough that they were my friends too, and I didn’t want them disappointed with crappy last-minute gifts.
I kind of blame his mother, who is a lovely woman who I was great friends with and stayed friends with – she treated my ex and his sister very differently with regard to expectations of general competence and getting-shit-done.
(PS: I’m not nostalgic for Buffy because the DVDs are on pretty much constant rotation, between Angel, Firefly, Veronica Mars and the X-Files.)
I do not do Christmas cards or letters. I don’t care what the tradition is. I DON’T HAVE TIME. I can now claim that I’m being green in my refusal but really, it’s because I’ve drawn the line that says cards aren’t important. Neither are thank you cards/letters. I will phone gift givers and say thank you but they will not get anything handwritten from me. If that means they choose not to give me a gift as a result, I’m cool with that.
Why would the holidays be any different than any other time of year? Women get stuck doing all the shitty work. Men enjoy the product of their associated women’s unpaid and unacknowledged work. On occasion, men do something and this is considered fracking amazing: see the Independence Day barbeque.
And god help us all if the woman in charge of the woman’s work slacks off a little, because then Timmy and Suzie won’t get presents this Christmas and the dishes will stay unwashed and it certainly won’t be the fault of the other responsible adult in the house (assuming a hetero couple). No wonder gay couples get asked “Who’s the woman?” It’s not just about penetration; it’s astonishment that the apartment hasn’t completely been given over to mice and cockroaches.
/rant brought on by having to clean the apartment for my male roommate who doesn’t even bother to do his own dishes and insists that I just have to nag him more and the prospect of going home tomorrow where my father acts like he is completely incapable of making any sort of adult action although being a senior whoziwhat of a large company and my mother who encourages this sort of behavior from him and fuck I just hate the patriarchy
@Nepenthe – me too!
Nepenthe, I wanna buy you a drink, and then find you a new, non-crappy roommate.