By Emma Weidmann | Editor-in-Chief
Recently, a holiday ad for a British retailer, Boots, sparked outrage for depicting Mrs. Claus as the mastermind behind the elvish operation at the North Pole instead of jolly Saint Nick. It paid homage to the labor of love that produces holiday magic year after year that falls mainly to women. Naturally, it made people mad.
The ensuing social media maelstrom was reminiscent of the Gillette toxic masculinity ad of notoriety. It’s so much more fun to manufacture some good old-fashioned culture war rage than to put on a thinking cap and look critically at a piece of media. How dare they imply Santa isn’t real, and the real stars of Christmas are often the women working behind the scenes to make their children and loved ones feel special each year? How dare they tell… *checks notes*… the truth?
Obviously, fathers play an important role in the family, and that extends to the holiday season. This is not discrediting the labor they do. But, that’s just the point. Why can’t we talk about how much women do without it suddenly becoming some sort of radical feminist attack on men?
Anyway, if you still believe in Santa, I suggest you stop reading now. There is no magical being that comes down the chimney to deliver gifts. It’s your mom, and she went to Target. There are no elves running the show, baking holiday treats and decorating the house. In fact, there isn’t even usually a team of people doing this at all. The burden of the holiday season likely falls on one woman’s shoulders.
Mothers spend hours cooking Thanksgiving dinners, asking children and family members for Christmas lists, shopping, decorating and more. It isn’t that fathers never do this, but it’s more typical for domestic tasks like these to fall on the parent who is in the home most, and that tends to be the mother. Four in five stay-at-home parents in America are, according to the Pew Research Center. And according to the National Fatherhood Initiative, 7% of fathers and 28% of mothers stay at home full-time. Being a stay-at-home mom is an often thankless job. These women put in hours of exhaustive and unpaid labor, yet the idea that they don’t “work” is still rampant. Society has the tendency to downplay the importance of this role, partly because it has been considered the norm for centuries in America — more of an expectation than a commendable sacrifice of time, money, energy and emotional labor.
This holiday season, take some of the burden off the shoulders of the women in your life. Clean the kitchen after meals. Help decorate — not just because it’s fun, but because you want to help. And finally, make sure that the holidays are just as magical for the people who make them happen as they are for you. Fill that stocking. Make sure there’s stuff under the tree. Show some recognition of the work that goes into making it the most wonderful time of the year.
