Craft and ritual are ancient facets of the human experience

So why are all the feminist moms so against the holidays?

I just finished making some seriously cool paper mache unicorn masks with my kids for Halloween. Did it take up a lot of my time? Yes. Was there a lot of tantruming from my three-year-old who wanted to “put the glitter on RIGHT NOW”? Yes. Did it leave a huge mess of paper mache paste in the dining room? Yes. Did my back hurt from pasting strip after strip onto the balloon-base structure? Yes.

Did I enjoy myself? Yeah, I think I did. It wasn’t the kind of enjoyment you get from, say, sipping champagne in a bubble bath, but it felt satisfying and wholesome (whatever the opposite feeling of spending an hour on Instagram is).

Growing up, the holidays were a BIG DEAL in my family. I am from a very WASP-y, middle-class, religiously-agnostic family (the kind that LOVES Christmas-tree shopping but only shows up at church if there’s a good party afterwards). My mom is a visual artist by trade, so Halloween costumes got serious. Costumes were always handmade and it took MONTHS. It typically involved fabric and sewing machines and paper mache and paint and foam core and wireframing and probably cost triple what it would have cost to buy a batman suit from Walmart. Easter involved elaborate treasure hunts that often covered literal acres of territory. Thanksgiving wasn’t complete without THREE HOMEMADE PIES. My mom was so good at playing Santa that I was a believer until I turned TEN (embarrassing, I know). 

When I was pregnant with my second, I attended a birthing class where they asked us: what are you really looking forward to when you become a parent?

I said: the holidays. That was the truth. After I left home for college (and then to travel and work internationally), I always had a twinge of sadness on Easter, because there was no one to make a treasure hunt for. Adult Halloween parties lacked the enthusiasm and creativity I remembered from my childhood. We often skipped Christmas altogether because we could get a cheaper airfare to wherever we were headed. 

I see a lot of backlash against the holidays these days from mom creators on Instagram and I get it. There are a lot of accounts talking about all of the invisible, gendered labor involved in pulling off a good Christmas (moms work SO HARD and then SANTA gets the credit!!). Other environmentalist accounts bemoan the wasteful overconsumption associated with the holidays. The Christians think we took Christ out of Christmas and replaced him with toys. Some of them are now saying Halloween is devil worship. Bla. bla. bla.