On the maternal urge to make the holidays happy
The mostly mild winter of my discontent
My cats are an ongoing tree menace
Christmas was always the signature event in my family’s calendar when I was growing up. The circle-it-in-red-and-underline-it holiday that we looked forward to all year. We didn’t have a lot of money and the effect of doing the one thing we could never do – spend money for pleasure –was restorative.
I’m hesitant to say it felt spiritual, but it was kind of that, too.
Happy Birthday baby Jesus and all, but feeling rich was the true joy of the season for us, the warm-glow catharsis for the days and weeks and months and years of feeling nothing but broke.
I remain a sucker for the season’s core sensation, for its fusion of generosity and extravagance all wrapped up in a bow, and while I wouldn’t defend consumerism as a virtue, I don’t think I’ll ever shake its powers at this time of year.
Ensuring that the holidays are indeed happy goes well beyond just money. It’s a ritual exercise that demands a human sacrifice, too, someone willing to do the work of the season and an individual equipped with the emotional and psychological strength to cope with the stress of other people. Specifically, how many people mess with the festivities either through their bad intentions, bad moods or just bad manners (for the record, I’ve been all three and sometimes at the same time).
In my family the person who played the role of seasonal martyr was my mother. Every year she would suit up and assume the role of special occasion commander. She made special note of secret wants; she shopped, spent money she didn’t have, and cooked and cleaned relentlessly, endlessly, all the damn time [1]. When financial constraints meant she couldn’t make our Christmas wishes come true, she tenderly prepared us for disappointment and tried to compensate with other meaningful gestures.
The obstacles to joyful celebration that she had to leap over to achieve her goal were plentiful and they usually multiplied during the holidays. Tis the season for shit to rain down in people’s lives, too. For layoffs and surprise tax bills, for illness and painful family estrangements. Staying buoyant under the weight of those burdens is just part of the festive challenge.
I have nightmares I will wake up and find my cat tangled in lights
When I had my son in 2013 I assumed the position of happy holiday-maker for our tiny family. It was at the same time that I became conscious of the fact that motherhood is, among a million things, also at bottom a role — a part you perform with varying degrees of success and aplomb. There are days when the performance feels organic and entirely natural, and there are days when it feels like you’re putting on a one-woman show titled I Am a Good Mom FFS.
This year, I’m not feeling the holidays; not really digging playing the role of holiday-maker. Would rather be the sulky kid than the perky mother this time around. The pandemic’s cynical evocation of ‘you do you’ has not just been a way of destroying essential public goods and trusts, it’s been a destructive force within families, too.
And yet, I still want my son to have the best Christmas despite all that, despite the individual me who would rather stay in bed. Possibly because I still find something sacred in the effort of making the season special for other people. And possibly because playing the role of mother, which can feel sometimes feel like another weighty burden, can also offer the motivation — not to mention the technique— for keeping afloat.
Wishing you a Happy Holiday and Blessed New Year. And sending a shout out to my mother. You did it every damn year, Liz. You deserve a lifetime achievement award at the 2024 Oscars.
Flannery
[1] My dad did things too but only in the assistant-to-the-regional-manager vein. But it may improve your sense of justice to know that he has been the bonafide domestic manager in my parents’ 50-years-long partnership, cooking, shopping, meal planning etc, for the last decade in addition to being my part-time manny.