Midlife MavericksEveryone talks about Father Christmas. Nobody talks about the woman holding December together.
Everyone talks about Father Christmas.
Father Christmas everywhere. Father Christmas of this and Father Christmas of that.
Nobody talks about Mother Christmas.
I love Christmas. I genuinely love it.
But Christmas, for anyone with children, doesn’t happen. It gets built.
With something almost nobody sees. The mental load and the invisible work.
The tree. The parties. Presents for teachers. Secret Santa. Presents for the family. Presents that don’t repeat. Presents that don’t offend. Presents that are “kind of cute.” The shopping list. The menu. The sweets. The logistics. The messages. The dates. The times. Who goes where. Who brings what. Who’s going to get upset. Who needs a bit of extra love.
None of it arrives wrapped.
Last week, Sunday, half past one in the afternoon. My husband decides to go to the shopping centre with the kids to “pick up a few things.” Two Sundays before Christmas.
Two hours stuck in the car looking for parking.
He calls me, furious. “There’s no parking.”
And drives back home.
I stayed there thinking, with something close to religious envy: what holy innocence.
A man reaching 55 without knowing that you do not go shopping at half past one on a Sunday afternoon, two weeks before Christmas.
I wish.
I wish I could live with that lightness in my head. With the idea that December is a normal month.
And then they tell me: “Just relax.”
In December nobody is allowed to tell me to relax.
“Just relax” has never calmed any woman down. Especially a 49-year-old woman. “Just relax” only throws more petrol on my fire.
I am not relaxed. It’s December. Don’t mess with me. Please.
This is where I notice the difference between men and women.
It isn’t a difference of capacity. It’s a difference of load.
Men work too. Of course they work. But they rarely carry the Department of Magic.
That department is ours.
And the most absurd part of all this.
When it goes well, nobody notices.
The presents arrive. The food arrives. The children are happy. The family says, “what a lovely Christmas.”
And the world moves on as if it had all happened by itself.
It didn’t.
It was work and planning. It was someone remembering everything while doing fifty other things at the same time.
Remember the king of the jungle.
The lion roars, puffs up his chest, scares everyone. Looks like the one in charge.
Then he sleeps.
The lioness is the one who hunts. The lioness is the one who makes sure there’s food. The lioness is the one who keeps life functioning.
And in the end the lion gets to eat first.
Now swap “jungle” for “Christmas.”
That’s why I’d like to propose something.
A thirteenth month.
A month in isolation. No phone. No children. No husband. Nobody saying my name or calling out “Mum.”
A month where the magic is just for me.
Since that doesn’t exist, I’ll settle for the minimum decent thing.
Less Father Christmas. More Mother Christmas.
That at least once, somebody picks up the Department of Magic with you.
Holy and Happy Christmas.
Comment below. What’s the one December task that always lands on you, even when you’ve sworn it won’t this year? I read every response.
This article was first published in Portuguese in my weekly column Oh pá, não me lixem! for Executiva.
