Taking on the Feminine Labor of Creating Holiday Magic

I can’t give up the invisible labor of making “holiday magic” because that’s how I feel closest to my late mother.

’Tis the season for women to do it all and wrap it in a bow.

It all begins with Back-to-School season: the shopping lists and classroom visits and new shoes and “room parent” sign-up sheets. And this load only intensifies when the morning air crisps and the edges of leaves turn yellow, when kids need Halloween costumes, when houses need rotating seasonal decorations for both the outside and the inside, when family members need to be texted or called to coordinate holiday travel and day-of gatherings, when special ingredients need to be purchased for those special festive meals, when presents need to be bought and wrapped, when holiday cards need to be ordered and addressed and stamped, when all of these things must happen at a constantly higher standard because social media seems like it’s raising the bar for parenthood—for motherhood, especially. Because in homes where there is a woman, the default manager of the household is, more often than not, her.

In other words, when the calendar flips to August, I dip my toes into the metaphorical pot of warm water. As the days inch toward December, I sink deeper—up to my shoulders, ears, and eventually the top of my head. By Christmas Eve, I’m in so deep that I’m forced to hold my breath to survive and ignore the rising temperature of the simmering water. By Valentine’s Day, the water has reached a boil that turns me red as a lobster, so hot I’m practically on fire.

And here’s the real kicker: My kids are still little—only two and four. This is the age when the holidays should be easier. They likely won’t remember trick-or-treating or the food we ate for Thanksgiving or the gifts under the tree. Additionally, after two years of isolated Covid holidays, I should be grateful for any semblance of normalcy they get to experience. I should revel in the moment my son reaches for my hand at the beginning of his Halloween party, pulling me into his classroom to watch him paint a pumpkin blue before my daughter tugs both of us toward her pre-K room where her brother cries crocodile tears to con her teacher into also giving him a cupcake that they eat sitting side by side. I should cherish the picture I take of them.

But, instead, standing in a room that is mostly full of moms, all I can think about is the Richard Dean quote that circulates every holiday season: “As a grown-up I’ve learned that all the ‘Christmas magic’ I felt as a kid was a really a mom who loved me so damn much.” Not only does it apply to every holiday, but also it is frighteningly true.

My mom did love me so damn much and proved it—especially at every holiday. No matter how many hours she had to bill by the end of the year or how many boxes of Hamburger Helper we’d been eating to save money, the holidays (particularly Christmas) were an Ozian season of homemade shortbread cookies and twinkly lights and tissue-paper-wrapped ornaments and extravagant presents and elaborate meals.

Even as I grew older, left for college, and studied sociology and feminism and gender roles, I never attempted to reveal the mayhem behind the curtain, least of all whenever I returned home at winter break. I didn’t want to think about the increased mental (and physical) burden required of my mom between October and February any more than I wanted to question the environmental impact of wrapping paper and ribbons and seasonal consumerism. I wanted to let Oz be Oz.

But then, when I was twenty-five, exactly one week before Thanksgiving, my mom was diagnosed with cancer. During an abdominal ultrasound to check for gallstones, they found a large tumor in her liver. Suddenly, it was impossible to ignore the labor that went into the holidays: She was in shock and preoccupied with scheduling medical tests and doctor’s visits. She who made the magic happen was sick, busy, and tired.

The absence of her effort revealed just how much she always did, how much we took for granted. It highlighted just how empty life would be without her, which I think is why I don’t remember much about that Thanksgiving. I can’t recall if we watched the parade or if she made her apple pie or if we even sat down at the table.

What I do remember is the phone call that came that Wednesday afternoon. Her oncologist told her that her PET scan results were consistent with Stage IV cholangiocarcinoma, a rare and aggressive form of bile duct cancer. The prognosis was grim. I can still feel the way that call stole pieces of her hope, how the news made us all abandon any attempt to make Thanksgiving normal. I went home that night without helping her brine the turkey or scoop out the sweet potatoes or set the table.

I didn’t want to think about the increased mental (and physical) burden required of my mom. I wanted to let Oz be Oz.

So when I drove to her house that Thursday morning, I expected it to be gloomy and depressing, an outward reflection of our collective turmoil. Instead, there was a plate of her traditional turkey-shaped shortbread cookies on the dining room table. Somehow, she’d found the energy to wake up early and bake them. They were still warm when I arrived, and when I bit into one, it tasted like a version of home that was slipping away, a version of home that was magical.

A few weeks later, we spent seven days in Houston, at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. We did all our holiday shopping in Rice Village between my mom’s tests and appointments. After she received a plan for aggressive chemo, we returned to Memphis. Until that year—and I’m embarrassed to admit this—my mom still set out presents from Santa for both my brother and me. Her philosophy was that Christmas magic shouldn’t be questioned and couldn’t be outgrown. She told us it would be transferred to our children whenever the first one arrived because it was always better to believe in something.

That year, we didn’t yet have kids. The missing presents “from Santa” further exemplified the smaller supply of magic my mom had available. But I still had my belief. I just redirected it into something even more impossible than a red-robed man sliding down the chimney; I believed she would have more time.

And she did: two Christmases worth—a lot for her prognosis, but not nearly enough. My mom then died on December 15, 2018. I had just turned twenty-seven, and my daughter was four months old.

She passed away in a hospice-care facility. When I returned to her house, it was a maze of Amazon boxes piled to the ceiling—literally Christmas in a box. One of the last nights she was alive, I sat by her bed and breastfed my baby, using my phone to order everything that she would have ordered. There were stocking stuffers and gift-wrapping materials and, of course, presents. As my mom was slipping out of consciousness, I found myself unconsciously slipping into her role as the matriarch, the family glue.

Which is why, not even a week after she died, I was wrapping gifts and tying bows and making her brownies and peppermint ice cream for Christmas Eve and preparing her casseroles for Christmas brunch and setting out a few presents from Santa for my infant daughter—even though she’d never remember it.

I did my best to be the magic my mom always was. I kept trying even in the midst of the pandemic, when I had another baby and the holidays dwindled to just the four of us—my husband and toddler and baby and me. Suddenly, most of our traditions didn’t make sense. Instead of a large brunch, we made my mom’s buttermilk pancakes. Instead of forcing the kids through a formal Christmas dinner, we snacked on leftovers.

Without guests to entertain and recipes to cook, I was able to set down the role of matriarch I’d briefly claimed and wrestle with the gendered labor of the holidays. I began to ask myself questions with no clear answers: How can I challenge the increased mental load of the season while also seeking comfort in the traditions that connect me to my mom? How can I model gender equality for my kids when I take on a disproportionate amount of gendered labor for a third of the year?

Maybe it is time for my husband to do more of the shopping or wrapping or decorating. Or maybe it’s time for both of us, especially me, to simply do less; as special as it was, the magic my mom labored to create was inherently unsustainable. But, if I do less, will my daughter and son still experience the sparkle of the Emerald City? Yes, I think to myself. But will I?

The only thing that eases the weight of those questions is the hours of invisible labor I spend by myself in a quiet house after my husband and kids have gone to bed. Those minutes—the ones spent decorating the house for Halloween, arranging flowers in a vase for the Thanksgiving table, sliding Christmas cards into envelopes, spooning jelly into the center of a cookie—are when I feel closest to my mom.

But, if I do less, will my daughter and son still experience the sparkle of the Emerald City? Yes, I think to myself. But will I?

In recent years, more women have written about the mental load and work that goes into the holidays. This isn’t a new phenomenon. In 2006, the American Psychological Association released a study that found that women experience more stress than men during the holidays because they “shoulder the majority of the family burden.” So why do women like me do it?

This is something my husband asks me repeatedly when I complain about wrapping gifts or the sticky mess of the sugar cookies that I make with my kids every December. “You’re making the choice,” he’ll say. “You don’t have to do any of it.”

He’s right. I don’t. I’m signing myself up to bring dessert for the class parties and choosing to send out a holiday card and planning what to buy as stocking stuffers. I’m the one driving myself to school for a party that mostly involves me standing around in a majority-mom classroom.

And I know I could do less to make my life less stressful and things would be fine. But they’d also be less special, I believe, because the “family burden” most often borne by women also passes down cultures and traditions through generations; it connects families and communities. Ultimately, it all becomes another example (albeit a less visible and less critical one than childcare or elder care) of how women—and more broadly, this “feminine” work—function as the social security net in our country.

This is why the foods and traditions that involve so much planning and time are sacred: They connect me to my mom, and they will be the things that connect my kids to me—the new baker of the shortbread cookies that taste like home. And that’s the true magic of the mental load, the gift of the one behind the curtain. But it’s also why this issue is complicated to me, and why participating in the holidays doesn’t feel like a clean-cut choice.

My mom loved me so damn much, just like I love my kids. But it’s unjust to equate “holiday magic” with “love” without acknowledging the increased mental (and physical) burden it requires. I wish I could tell my mom that I’ve finally seen behind the curtain. I wish I could recognize how hard she worked to make my childhood special, to pass down traditions and memories worth sharing with my own kids. Above all, I wish I could tell her thank you.