How to Grinch Your Way to a Merrier Christmas

If women are so miserable during the holidays, is it time to spend them striking?

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve read article after article from frazzled women discussing how the holidays fill them with dread and leave them exhausted. They talk about their inability to enjoy any downtime, their empty stockings, their demanding children, and the unwavering apathy and laziness of their male partners.

To deal with this issue, I propose a radical approach: a holiday strike!

Instead of shopping, baking, wrapping, decorating, cooking, cleaning, boxing, returning, rinsing, and repeating, maybe the mothers of the world should spend all that money and time acting a little more like their children’s fathers this holiday season.

Who would striking hurt?

Of course, women refusing to put in more holiday effort than their men is bound to have an impact on just about everyone in their households, and it may not always feel good.

The male sense of entitlement would certainly take a big hit. Men who’ve grown accustomed to presents magically appearing under the auto-decorating tree and food spontaneously generating itself on their Christmas plates are bound to feel a certain amount of butthurt if the holiday cheer doesn’t materialize the way it always has.

They may even whine and lash out, though they must assuredly know they don’t have a leg to stand on if they’re criticizing their female partners and relatives for doing the same amount of work as them.

Then, there’s the kids. Many women worry a strike would leave their kids with sadness and disappointment for the holidays, and this is likely to occur. If the babies are too young to process these feelings or understand why they’re happening, then it might be necessary to hold off on any picketing until they reach an age where they can be reasoned with.

However, I’d argue that feelings of sadness and disappointment might be better for older kids in the long run. Not only could a Christmas strike help them learn to build resilience against these unpleasant emotions that will plague them on and off for the rest of their lives, but there are a couple of other more important benefits that I’ll talk about below.

Who would striking help?

First and foremost, striking would help the women suffering from holiday stress and overwhelm. I don’t need to waste many words on how awesome it is to get a massage the day before Thanksgiving or skip Christmas to go to the beach. Women who come out of the holidays feeling as rested as everyone else will naturally be the primary beneficiaries of a holiday strike — as they have every right to be. No guilt. No apology.

Striking this Christmas could also help another very important demographic in this conversation: young daughters. I vividly remember spending my childhood watching my mother sweat it out to give us a memorable Christmas every year.

While she and my grandmas and aunts busted their asses and expected me and my sisters to do the same, my male relatives all sat in front of the TV and bitched about whatever was on Fox News.

The blatant unfairness of it all didn’t seem to bother anyone enough to upset the patriarchal status quo, so I organized my own multi-year holiday strike, waging a battle my family now affectionately refers to as “The Holiday Wars.”

When I was ten or twelve, I’d had enough of us girls being expected to play servants while my brother splashed in the hot tub or curled up in front of the fire with his Nintendo.

I didn’t scream or yell. I simply ordered my younger sisters to go play with their presents while I sat down with the men. When any of the adult women told me or my sisters to do something, I told them to get my brother to do it. I made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that all of us would be helping or none of us would.

It took three years of bargaining, screaming, threats, and fights, but one Christmas, my mom finally caved. Above the protests of the men and the grandmas, she told my brother to get his ass up and grab a dish sponge. And that was that. None of us ever complained about helping during the holidays again.

It still flabbergasts me that it took that amount of effort just to get my family to agree to the most minimal amount of fairness. It also stuns me to this day that the women were some of the ones who resisted the hardest.

I figured if the older women wanted to wait on the older men like slaves, that was their business, but the buck stopped with my generation. It’s unfortunate that I, a child, had to lead the adults by example.

That’s why I think a holiday strike would do a world of good for all the daughters out there watching their mothers struggle. And make no mistake, they do see their mothers struggle, and they’re absorbing the lessons of watching the women in their lives carry the holiday load on their own.

Not only can daughters benefit from the example of their mothers sticking up for themselves, but sons can also benefit from the lesson that they are not, in fact, entitled to the free labor of the women in their lives. Boys absorb the lessons of watching their fathers lounge on the couch while their mothers scramble, too, and those lessons aren’t exactly setting the stage for a brighter holiday future.

Surprisingly, a stealth demographic could also benefit from a holiday strike: men. More specifically, those men who don’t do a whole lot to “help” make the magic happen.

There’s nothing like a healthy dose of marital strife, hurt, and resentment to go along with your roast beast, and that’s exactly what men get when they veg out in front of the TV while the womenfolk run themselves ragged.

The resentment and anger practically radiated off my mother and other female relatives from November to January every year, even if they slapped smiles on their faces to hide it.

My mom was constantly on edge during the holiday season, and everyone had to walk on eggshells to avoid setting her off — especially my dad. Their screaming and fighting were even more relentless than they were throughout the rest of the year.

During the holidays, my mom cried and whispered how much she hated my dad practically every time she thought no one was paying attention.

Though there were many factors that led to the dissolution of their marriage, the holiday season was one of the threads that contributed to its unraveling. And my mom wasn’t the only one. She was only one in a larger pattern of Thanksgiving resentment and Christmas strife.

Perhaps I don’t grasp the standard male capacity for apathy, but to me, a couple of months of being on the receiving end of my partner’s fury and contempt sound a lot worse than a few trips to the grocery store and a few sinks full of dirty dishes. Then again, I suppose if men thought this way, we wouldn’t be talking about a holiday strike.

Delegate. Delegate. Delegate.

Nowadays, when it comes to the holidays, the women of my family have high expectations, especially since my parents’ divorce.

My youngest sister and I are the best cooks in the family, so while we handle the technical stuff, we have a fleet of male and female happy helpers making sides, chopping, fetching, and cleaning up after us.

We also do Secret Santa every year so that everyone gets one nice present they really want, and no one has to stress over shopping for dozens of small items that will be forgotten by Valentine’s Day.

During our holidays, everyone contributes. Everyone decorates. Everyone shops. Everyone cleans. And we all get to enjoy the festivities — not just the half of us with dicks.

This probably sounds like utopia to the frazzled moms reading this post right now, but remember, I had to organize a three-year strike to make it happen.

If I hadn’t been my iconoclastic, justice-oriented autistic self, we might’ve all stayed stuck in the same pattern that still holds sway over tens of millions of households around the world. We might just now be trying to claw our way out of it.

Bottom Line

I’m not saying a holiday strike is for everybody, but for those women at the end of their rope who just can’t seem to get anyone else to pull their Yuletide weight, it could be something to think about.

It’s surprising how motivated many men become to share the holiday load when their choices are whittled down to that or eating frozen pizza and watching Netflix for Christmas.

So if you’re having a crappy Thanksgiving and a scary Christmas, consider just forgetting the whole exercise. Take a bath, sneak off with a good book, and let everyone else finally figure out it ain’t elves conjuring up the holiday magic.

I won’t lie. It’ll be rough in the short run, but in the long run, it might just make your holiday festivities a little more festive.