In your family, who crafts the Halloween costumes, carefully gluing a hundred tiny rhinestones on Elsa’s glistening gown? Who plans the dishes for Thanksgiving dinner? Who checks Santa’s list for naughty and nice? Who does the jolly old soul’s shopping? Who mails the holiday cards? Who?
If your family is like many, it’s the women.
I was struck by this reality in Mormon blogger Jana Reiss’ entertaining post last December at Religion News Service about how many women serve as Santa’s little elves, the tradition-bearers in so many families:
“And it’s not that men don’t help with Christmas. Most do, in my experience. But there seems to be an unspoken and unwritten rule in even the most feminist-forward households that Women Are in Charge of Christmas. Women are the wonder-makers, the elves. We may delegate some responsibilities, but the red-nosed buck stops with us.”
My mother likes to joke that my father still believes in Santa—he’s always so surprised about how the presents show up under the tree each year!
It’s not just my family. Or yours. Decades of research has shown that women really are the religious and cultural keepers of their families. Women pray more than men. They believe in God at higher rates. And, crucially, they have largely had the task of spiritually indoctrinating their children, particularly in generations past where women were less likely to have formal employment outside the home and spent more time than men with the children.
The impact of the tradition-bearer extends beyond strictly religious roles. In fact, a former senior executive at a major digital photo goods company recently said the company considers women to be the “chief memory officers” in a family. Men tend to not take the time to send the Christmas cards or craft the photo books, he explained, so his company targets their products to women, particularly mothers. Is this something to be offended by—or proud of?
Women’s impact on the family doesn’t just affect our personal lives—it’s shaping business decisions, too. Women already control the consumer purchasing power in America, and they’re also considered one of the major growth markets in the world. With women reporting that they find the Christmas season to be the busiest time of the year, marketers are eager to find ways to make their pitch to the woman of the house.
So women are often the ones responsible for maintaining spiritual and cultural traditions in a family and society. Is that patronizing, or inspiring? Maybe it’s because I spent too much time parsing through papal documents on the meaning of femininity, or because I find myself in the midst of these thoughts so often in the minutiae of my own modern marriage, but I can’t help but think it’s a little bit of both.
I don’t believe there’s anything in my female DNA that makes me better at Christmas gift shopping than my husband. And ample research shows that even in families where the mother and father both work full time, women are left filling in the gaps of childcare, scheduling, mealtime, and logistics, while men are more likely to make time for their own leisure. These activities of family ritual and meaning shouldn’t belong to women alone, particularly when they overburden already struggling moms. Men: You can bake Christmas cookies for your neighbors, create the Christmas cards, and deliver holiday gifts to your kids’ teachers, too. You can also pluck an angel off the Christmas-gift tree and shop for a needy family. Crafting and keeping family traditions should be the work of an entire family unit, men included. These are important tasks that more men should see as part of their contribution to the family and society.
Still, there’s a part of me that also cherishes these rituals of femininity and prides the examples of strong female nurturers both in my Catholic tradition and my family’s heritage.
I think of my grandmother, deeply devoted to praying the Rosary, each time I teach my son to pray the Hail Mary. When I teach him about the woman “full of grace,” I feel I’m telling him something about his great-grandma. I remember another family matriarch’s soothing strokes each time I rub the back of an anxious child. My Catholic great-grandmother, a headstrong, vivacious woman who was forced to drop out of high school to help care for her younger brothers, was well known by her Jewish neighbors for her generosity during times of heartbreak and happiness—a cake for a family sitting shiva, a home-cooked meal delivered upon the birth of a baby. Or yet more aunts and cousins and mothers and grandmothers who have embraced the hidden work of quiet holiness. I want to be like these women, too.
As another holiday sprint launches into full gear, I’ll be bringing these musings, as well as the wisdom of the religious women in my life, to the holiday table.
What about yours?
I was struck by this reality in Mormon blogger Jana Reiss’ entertaining post last December at Religion News Service about how many women serve as Santa’s little elves, the tradition-bearers in so many families:
“And it’s not that men don’t help with Christmas. Most do, in my experience. But there seems to be an unspoken and unwritten rule in even the most feminist-forward households that Women Are in Charge of Christmas. Women are the wonder-makers, the elves. We may delegate some responsibilities, but the red-nosed buck stops with us.”
My mother likes to joke that my father still believes in Santa—he’s always so surprised about how the presents show up under the tree each year!
It’s not just my family. Or yours. Decades of research has shown that women really are the religious and cultural keepers of their families. Women pray more than men. They believe in God at higher rates. And, crucially, they have largely had the task of spiritually indoctrinating their children, particularly in generations past where women were less likely to have formal employment outside the home and spent more time than men with the children.
The impact of the tradition-bearer extends beyond strictly religious roles. In fact, a former senior executive at a major digital photo goods company recently said the company considers women to be the “chief memory officers” in a family. Men tend to not take the time to send the Christmas cards or craft the photo books, he explained, so his company targets their products to women, particularly mothers. Is this something to be offended by—or proud of?
Women’s impact on the family doesn’t just affect our personal lives—it’s shaping business decisions, too. Women already control the consumer purchasing power in America, and they’re also considered one of the major growth markets in the world. With women reporting that they find the Christmas season to be the busiest time of the year, marketers are eager to find ways to make their pitch to the woman of the house.
So women are often the ones responsible for maintaining spiritual and cultural traditions in a family and society. Is that patronizing, or inspiring? Maybe it’s because I spent too much time parsing through papal documents on the meaning of femininity, or because I find myself in the midst of these thoughts so often in the minutiae of my own modern marriage, but I can’t help but think it’s a little bit of both.
I don’t believe there’s anything in my female DNA that makes me better at Christmas gift shopping than my husband. And ample research shows that even in families where the mother and father both work full time, women are left filling in the gaps of childcare, scheduling, mealtime, and logistics, while men are more likely to make time for their own leisure. These activities of family ritual and meaning shouldn’t belong to women alone, particularly when they overburden already struggling moms. Men: You can bake Christmas cookies for your neighbors, create the Christmas cards, and deliver holiday gifts to your kids’ teachers, too. You can also pluck an angel off the Christmas-gift tree and shop for a needy family. Crafting and keeping family traditions should be the work of an entire family unit, men included. These are important tasks that more men should see as part of their contribution to the family and society.
Still, there’s a part of me that also cherishes these rituals of femininity and prides the examples of strong female nurturers both in my Catholic tradition and my family’s heritage.
I think of my grandmother, deeply devoted to praying the Rosary, each time I teach my son to pray the Hail Mary. When I teach him about the woman “full of grace,” I feel I’m telling him something about his great-grandma. I remember another family matriarch’s soothing strokes each time I rub the back of an anxious child. My Catholic great-grandmother, a headstrong, vivacious woman who was forced to drop out of high school to help care for her younger brothers, was well known by her Jewish neighbors for her generosity during times of heartbreak and happiness—a cake for a family sitting shiva, a home-cooked meal delivered upon the birth of a baby. Or yet more aunts and cousins and mothers and grandmothers who have embraced the hidden work of quiet holiness. I want to be like these women, too.
As another holiday sprint launches into full gear, I’ll be bringing these musings, as well as the wisdom of the religious women in my life, to the holiday table.
What about yours?
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