The Conspiracy to Keep Women Busy®, Part 455 : Holiday Traditions
The Jones family was gathering at Linda’s house for the Christmas dinner party. As the guests came to the table for dinner, they noticed something terrible. There was no turkey served.
Linda’s family had been through such a busy time with their daughter being in hospital that by the time they got around to buying the food for the party, the nearby stores were out of turkeys. (Yes, one needs to be on top of this turkey thing. They appear at a certain time and then they sell out). And on the very day, they’d had an emergency visit to the doctor for the daughter. There wasn’t time to even cook the two whole chickens they had bought out of desperation. With guests to arrive soon, Linda cut up the chickens and roasted the pieces, getting them cooked just in time. The guests were not impressed. They put their noses in the air and left.
Okay, that didn’t actually happen!
But are you thinking it might happen to you? Or that your relatives will berate you all through the meal if it isn’t prepared to their expectations? Are you concerned they might cease to speak to you if you decline to host altogether? What if you don’t even have a crisis the way Linda’s family had and just feel tired from all the holiday-related tasks?
Do you fear that doing anything other than satisfying others’ expectations is simply Not An Option?
So Many Expectations
A lot of expectations come up around holidays and special occasions. The fancy meals, the fancy decorations. Presents bought for every relative and every relative’s relative.
The fulfillment of those expectations frequently falls on women. A friend of mine was giving me a long list of things that she “had” to do to get ready for the holidays. The shopping, the cards, the food preparation, the organizing of people and things. I calculated that the cards alone might have required a time expenditure equivalent to a week of full-time work. Put it all together, we’re easily talking about a month of full-time work. It’s no wonder that women who are organized will start preparing for holiday celebrations a few months in advance. That’s before we even mention that one might easily need most of the next year after that to recover.
When I asked my friend what would happen if she didn’t do those things, she stared at me blankly. It was like the world would stop spinning if those things didn’t get done. I suspect if she had been sick or injured in hospital, she might have still been trying to make all the things happen, somehow directing them from her bed.
Why does it seem necessary to decorate trees, put up tinsel that will shed all over the floors and create a massive vacuuming task, cook twenty different time-consuming dishes, and incur credit card debt to buy presents for people that they don’t even need or want?
After all, it’s not like anyone is going to die from a lack of such things.
Advice columns are filled with women wanting to opt out of gift exchanges or opt out of hosting the family Thanksgiving meal, the Christmas meal, and who knows what other meal. They all ask the question: How can I tell the family that I don’t want to do those things?
Why Aren’t We Just Opting Out?
Why haven’t many women announced to our families that they aren’t hosting this year? Or that if they do host, they’ll be serving something other than that dreaded turkey that takes all day to cook? Or that they’ll only buy gifts from themselves? (As opposed to gifts from her partner to herself, her partner to his mother, and her brother to her other brother?).
The question is always about one, and only one problem. These women are afraid of offending people. People have expected them to do all this stuff, so they have kept on doing all this stuff. Now they’ve finally decided they don’t want to do all this stuff, but they are worried that family members will be mad at them if they don’t do all this stuff.
If you are the person who has somehow gotten stuck with doing all this stuff, listen up. There is a reason why you ended up doing all this stuff. There is a reason why the people around you are not jumping up to do all the planning, cooking, shopping, gift-wrapping, card-sending, and decorating. There is a reason why they want you to do these tasks. These tasks are exhausting, and most people don’t want to do them.
For the women writing in to advice columns, the fact that these tasks are exhausting is not in question. Surely, in a reasonable world, it would make sense that wanting to opt out of an exhausting task is not an unusual sentiment to have.
What is stopping these women from—stopping? It all comes down to one fear. As we said, the fear of offending people. You know, those people comprising your entire extended family. Those people who understand perfectly well that hosting the family holiday gathering would be too exhausting for them, but who don’t appear to have figured out that it is actually too exhausting for you. Those people who have you believing that without you hosting a spectacular holiday event, the entire family will fail to have any relationships with each other ever again. It all depends on you, apparently.
There is nothing wrong with not being up to hosting a fancy gathering, or any gathering for that matter. There is nothing wrong with a gathering that involves an extremely simple meal, no presents, and no decorations. There is nothing wrong with a gathering happening next year instead of this year.
There are so many ways that so many people have suggested simplifying holiday celebrations. From opting out of gift exchanges, to restricting gifts to children only, to meeting at restaurants for a meal. The list goes on.
The real issue is that we wouldn’t need any ideas on how we can peacefully make changes to how holidays are celebrated if we weren’t concerned about offending people. I am repeating this, because I want all of us to truly understand that if all these holiday tasks don’t get done, nothing will explode and nobody will die. It all comes down to our fears of offending people. All of it.
So What Next?
If holidays are creating insanity for you, you need to get your sanity back. You need to take a look at the to-do list for these holidays, and decide that you will do less. Possibly much, much less.
At this point, a lot of women will consider doing less, and come up with objections such as the following:
“My partner won’t agree”.
“My mother-in-law will get annoyed”.
“My sister’s cousin-in-law’s partner will make comments”.
“I will feel guilty”.
These women will then conclude that they have no other option but to continue imbibing insanity.
At this point, you might still think that your job is to somehow make other people understand why these tasks are exhausting, so that you can obtain their permission to opt out.
Remember what I said about why other people aren’t jumping up to take on these duties? It’s because they know these duties are exhausting. Does this mean you will be met with empathy and understanding if you opt out? Possibly not. After all, at this point all the other women could be terrified that they’ll be expected to volunteer for the various tasks, and their minds are preoccupied with how to come up with polite ways to yell “Not it!”.
You’re probably also wondering how on earth to say “Not it!”, when you’ve previously always said “Yes, of course this nurturing machine will continue to provide nurturing on demand”.
Would people stop expecting you to do a whole lot of things if you could only explain to them how exhausting they are? Sorry, it won’t. Nobody on this planet seems to really understand exhaustion that isn’t their own.
Would people stop expecting you to do a whole lot of things if you could only explain to them that the load you are carrying is unfair? Not so much. Again, if they were doing the tasks, they would understand. Someone else doing the tasks? It must be easy, right?
There is only one way to get people to understand that you’re not up to doing a certain task. It is to stop doing it. That’s just about the only way to convince people.
You can use words to communicate your refusal. They just aren’t likely to work unless you back them up by action—or inaction, as the case may be. Here are a few phrases you can use to communicate this sentiment of “Not it!”.
“I’m not feeling up to it”. (When asked why not, repeat the same phrase).
“I did the first ten years, someone else can take it over”.
“Someone else can do it this time”.
“It’s someone else’s turn”.
“Not it!”.
Do those phrases sound repetitive, and all very similar to each other? They are. The sentiment is very simple, namely, “No”.
It’s really all there is to it. It isn’t about convincing people that you need to stop doing certain tasks. It’s all about telling people that you will stop doing certain tasks, and then, even more importantly, it’s about stopping doing those tasks.
So many of us are stuck in the idea that we’ll be able to reduce how much we do, as long as everyone around us gives us the permission to stop. Do you think people will give you permission to stop? I wouldn’t count on it.
Your ability to say no is going to come down to one thing, and one thing only. It will come down to whether you believe it’s reasonable for you to say no. That’s all.
You may fear the disapproval of everyone around you if you don’t satisfy the expectations of absolutely everybody. That’s not easy to deal with, I know. You don’t get to control who approves of your decisions; though of course, by trying to do everything that people expect of us, that is precisely what we find ourselves aiming for.
Learning to say no is not easy. Don’t beat yourself up if you find it hard. It could take time to learn and practice. But it’s a skill whose importance we’ll find ourselves coming back to again and again.
Because you know the one thing that will permit the minds of the people around you to consider that you, in fact, might have been doing too many things? You ceasing to do those things.
