Moms Hate Christmas

[Clodfobble]

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day, who had always sort of been known in our group as the one who just loves Christmas. Genuinely enjoyed the music, baked the cute cookies, decorated her apartment to the gills, attempted to decorate all of ours too if we'd only let her, etc. But she admitted that since becoming a mom (her daughter is 5 now,) she absolutely hates Christmas, and for all the same reasons I do, even though I didn't start with nearly the same positive attitude that she did.

As the wife/mother, you have to buy the presents for everyone. Extended family is hard enough, but now you have to add all of his family--people whose tastes you don't know and may actively dislike. And if you do make him buy the presents, he's gonna do a half-assed job of it at best, which they put up with when he was a bachelor but now they'll blame you for being a bad wife and not taking the responsibility on yourself.

Then everyone comes to you to tell them what your kids want, so essentially you have to come up with like 15-20 good presents for each of your own kids, because Grandma will be pissed if you say "he'll like this" and then he doesn't like it. Not impossible for toddlers, but by the age of 9 kids are almost as hard to shop for as adults. My father makes me actually buy and wrap them too, then just gives me money to cover it. If he were married, she would almost certainly do it, after I sent her an Amazon link anyway, but he's single so it's my job.

And then everyone's all "Nooo! No Christmas music in November! No Black Friday rush! Wait until December at least!" Screw you guys, the kind of Christmas you expect to have takes more than 3 weeks to pull off. I know, I know, everyone's got these fond memories of all the great traditions your mom did for you. And she did love you, and vicariously loved your enjoyment of it.

But I'm telling you, she hated every minute of it.