Being the Holiday Magic Maker Is Exhausting

Being the person behind most of the magic that makes our kids' eyes sparkle throughout the holiday season is pretty cool, but it's also exhausting. Those of us who have families that gather for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's spend a solid six weeks in a relentless cycle of planning, prepping, cooking, cleaning, decorating, organizing, communicating, traveling, shopping, wrapping, shipping, gifting, photographing, designing, writing, mailing, hosting, and attending—on top of our normal parenting, family, career, and volunteer commitments.

Now work in additional holidays for multicultural families, birthday celebrations, and school events taking place during a season when anyone can catch one or more of the multitude of viruses and other illnesses kids love to share right when nobody has time for any of it.

Ignore Social Media and Outdated Gender Roles

Because we scroll through social media, we feel the pressure to ensure our kids aren't missing out on what other families are doing, like daily Elf of the Shelf adventures, crafting ornaments for all the grandparents, baking homemade gingerbread houses to build, sprinkling reindeer food in the yard, sledding after every snowfall, and putting together coordinated outfits for the holiday card, all while taking Instagram-worthy photos during each thing to show everyone just how merry our bunch can be.

The final blow to our teetering sanity? If you're a cisgender woman married to a cisgender man, it's likely that you've fallen into the passed-down tradition of doing most of the work without asking for help from your husband or kids. You're used to keeping all the glitter-covered balls in the air like so many other moms out there in the same position that you grit your teeth and plow through the season with a smile on your face year after year. Even when it wears you down. Even when you repeatedly end up with an empty stocking on the mantle and another bathrobe under the tree.

It doesn't have to be like this.

Make Sure Your Partner Contributes to the Partnership

A marriage is a partnership. Deciding together what each of you want out of the holiday season and the magic therein (traditions, activities, events), then figuring out what is feasible within each of your budgeted physical, mental, logistical, and financial limits can make a huge difference in the level of happiness for both parties. Yes, you can set a "budget" on mental loads.

Divide responsibilities up accordingly, and stick to them. Talk about what gifting means to you, and how your family can do it in a more meaningful, affordable, personal way for each other. There may be some uncomfortably honest conversations and unlearning about gender roles and personal responsibilities during all of this, but it will be worth it once a reindeer's worth of weight is off your shoulders and you're actually able to enjoy the season.

Make New Rules That Fit Your Family—and Energy Level

Even with your partner as, well, your partner in all this work, it might help even more to do a little less, overall. Change the rules of magic in your home by making the elf a friendly decoration instead of a surveillance hire. Skip the time-eating holiday card project and instead email or text a family photo taken during the most important event of the season.

Limit one gift from Santa per person, but make it known that he asks grown-ups to wrap and label them to save him some time so that you can eliminate some the exhausting covert efforts.

Buy cookie and bread mixes or prepared treats and foods rather than making everything from scratch. Or do a swap with friends so each person only makes what they do best.

With two or more sets of cultural or religious traditions in the home that overlap in December, delegate some of that festive labor to grandparents who want to participate. Turn down invitations to parties and events that you aren't really excited about, or send only the one person to it who genuinely wants to go.

When it comes to decorations, put out the most important and sentimental ones first. Save the extras for if you have the desire and energy to jazz things up even more. Set short time limits on your social media apps to keep you away from the FOMO so you can actually enjoy what's going on right in front of you.

Maybe the best holiday magic we can make is the kind that brings our families joy while allowing us to be seen and appreciated by them at the same time. We deserve a lifetime of holiday seasons during which we feel engaged, grateful, and overwhelmed with love instead of to-do lists.

I want to be exhausted from laughing too hard instead of taking too much on.