Illustration by Wenjia Tang
There’s nothing like the magic of the holiday season with little ones. Each twinkling light is a little more magical. Each carol sounds a little lovelier, every cup of hot cocoa a smidge cozier.
Or at least, that’s what the holidays could be like for parents, if only we made an ironclad blood oath (or at least a solid pinky-swear) and vowed to banish certain holiday “traditions” from our lives.
I know, I sound like a Scrooge, and I realize that some parents claim to love and adore the hours of planning, meticulous work and shopping mall fight clubs that accompany these modern holiday rituals. But face it, these parents have probably been indulging a little too heavily in their stash of special eggnog.
So, for the sake of simplifying and bettering my own holiday season, and so that my children may receive the gift of a sane parent on Christmas morning, these are the parenting traditions of which I will take no part.
1. Elf on the Shelf
The Elf on the Shelf is a menace to society, unwelcome in my home. He may have started out cute and harmless, as well as a fairly ingenious, emotionally manipulative scare tactic. But now, like much of parenting in the era of Pinterest, it’s a whole thing. Parents are expected to stage elaborate tableaux with the elf on a nightly basis, featuring tiny little props and convoluted backstories and gumdrops spelling out witty messages across the kitchen floor. It’s just too much. Life as a parent is exhausting enough without staying up until the wee hours of night, staging the elf and a group of Barbies into a re-creation of da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.”
2. Santa Pictures
There are a lot of holiday memories I want to make with my children. But standing in line at the mall for several hours every Christmas, with bland versions of carols on repeat over the loudspeaker, all so I can shove them, red-faced and screaming, toward a bearded man in a fat suit, is just not one of them. No one enjoys this process. The children are traumatized. The teenage Christmasland employees at the mall clearly would rather be anywhere else. Santa almost always phones it in. And as parents, we white-knuckle our way through the whole thing, all for an overpriced photo of our child looking in terror at a hirsute stranger.
3. Seeking out the “It” Toy
In today’s world, the collective soul of humanity sometimes seems to hang precariously in the balance. That’s never more apparent than when adults wrestle each other for the last Hatchimal or Tickle Me Elmo or any such annual designated “it” toy left in town on Christmas Eve. I have no interest in selling my soul for a toy that my kid is going to tire of in approximately 37 minutes. No doll or stuffed animal or video game system is worth taking an elbow to the face at Walmart. Let’s hold onto our dignity and leave the hysteria to Black Friday shoppers.
No stuffed animal is worth taking an elbow to the face at Walmart.
4. Matching Christmas Pajamas
I once thought it was sweet and fun to dress siblings in matching Christmas pajamas. And then I tried to buy said pajamas for my children two weeks before Christmas, only to discover that there were none left in the United States (and also China). Apparently, if parents want to coordinate their children’s Christmas pajamas, they must do so by the end of June. If you try to do it after that point, you will be laughed out of every kid’s clothing store within a 50-mile radius or met with thinly veiled derision on Amazon. Which is why this year, the only way my children will match on Christmas morning is via their adorable, customized DNA.
5. Elaborate Gingerbread Houses
Gingerbread houses are a seemingly idyllic, old-fashioned Christmas tradition straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. But any parent who has actually tried to construct a gingerbread house with a small child knows that the reality is much closer to Picasso’s “Guernica.” It is a veritable massacre, where the end result is a pile of gingerbread crumbs smeared with icing, candy cane shrapnel and tears. It’s best to just buy a pre-made house and hand your kid a spoonful of frosting to eat.
6. Making a Tree “Moment”
What could possibly go wrong with a holiday ritual that involves forced family bonding, isolated tree farms and stressed-out parents wielding hand saws? Everything. Everything could go wrong. Which is why I will save my time, energy and possibly thumbs and get a pre-cut tree at Costco. I have an infant and a toddler. They won’t care if I stick an angel on top of a Chia pet, as long as there are shiny presents underneath it. Parenting at Christmas is hard enough without adding an edge of open-air danger.
Elizabeth Becker is a writer, registered nurse and mom of two. Read more about her life and other parenting epiphanies at lifeinacoffeespoon.com.
