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Let’s make holidays every other year
Updated: January 9, 2012 8:26AM
As I write this column, I am surrounded by boxes. Some are filled with Christmas decorations; some with fall decorations. I cannot grasp that fall is already behind us and the holidays are upon us yet again. Ask any mom— we’re all in denial for the week or so after Thanksgiving.
I have Christmas lights up outside and dead mums in my planters. I have an autumn wreath on my door and am hanging holiday garland on my railings tomorrow. I have bills still coming for new covers on my patio chairs and Christmas cards that arrived before Thanksgiving. It is all so overwhelming, and I can only think that one thing would solve the annual inundation of the holidays. Make them every two years instead of every year.
Before anyone gets crazy on me, hear me out. Fellow moms, rally around me now. Think about it. Why do we have to drive ourselves absolutely nuts every single holiday season with shopping and baking and decorating and cooking and sending out cards when we could just as easily have every other year off?
Let’s honestly think about what we’d truly want to happen on an annual basis. The religious element to the holidays? Of course. Watching holiday movies in our pajamas? You betcha. Santa Claus? We can still visit him at the mall but he doesn’t have to visit the little ones every year armed with a bundle of toys that they really don’t need, does he?
So, okay, visiting Santa Claus at the mall, watching “Miracle on 34th Street” and our religious observation of the holidays stay. Everything else? I say we take a much-needed break, leave those mums to petrify in their planters till after winter and worry about the holidays every two years. Sound like a plan to every parent out there? I agree.
Who would really complain about taking every other year off? Well, probably all those in our lives who don’t help with the baking, cooking, addressing, mailing, decorating, or otherwise making the holidays happen. Because they, who shall remain nameless, think that moms have some secret formula for getting it all done on top of already over-crowded schedules. (We do. It’s called staying up till 1 am every night.)
So, who’s with me on this? Moms for sure. Dads? Dads should be on board because everyone knows that when moms are relaxed in their jammies watching little Susan Walker find Kris Kringle’s cane in the house that her mother and Mr. Gailey are about to fall in love in and buy her for Christmas, life at home is pretty darned good.
Okay, so let me know if I need to pull the mums or pull out an afghan. I vote afghan, in case anyone is tallying this up. No? The holidays are still annual? Well then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Moms are about to get just a little bit crabby and overtired for the next few weeks. And when you watch home videos of Christmas and Mom is yawning her brains out, you had your chance. Okay? Well, feel free to email me in the middle of the night, readers. Goodness knows I’ll be up completing some holiday task or losing sleep over it.
Lake Forester columnist Maria Malin can be reached at write2mariamalin@aol.com
