Question of the Day — Holiday Chores

~ Laura

Who does the majority of work around the holidays? By work, I mean food shopping, card writing, present shopping, UPS waiting, stocking stuffing, Menorrah lighting, tree trimming, latke frying, yadda yadda. You, your spouse, or your mom?

Published by Laura

19 thoughts on “Question of the Day — Holiday Chores”

  1. Baking, most of the home decorating, most of the Christmas shopping, gift wrapping, mailing–my wife.
    Putting up the Christmas tree and the outdoor Christmas lights, Christmas letter writing, baked goods delivering, some of the Christmas shopping and home decorating–me.
    Putting sprinkles and frosting on the baked goods, Christmas tree decorating, Christmas letter envelope stuffing and addressing–family project with the girls. (In theory. In practice…not always successful.)

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  3. I shop for presents for my many relatives, he shops for three relatives in consultation with me, and we collaborate on the kids’ gifts. We have separate Christmas card lists (about 20 each), but my husband prints up the photos we enclose. He buys the tree, brings it home, and puts it up. I organized a gingerbread baking party for our daughter and a group of college students this year, and he did the cleanup. I’m not sure who is going to decorate the tree or cook Christmas dinner. We have a growing family and our holiday traditions are still in flux. Moreover, since what we are aiming at is some variant on the traditional Polish Vigilia, and since my husband is the resident Pole, he has to take the lead. The task I am least looking forward is the pre-Christmas housecleaning.
    When I was growing up, my parents only had a Christmas tree once or twice, relying on grandparents to provide the holiday cheer.

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  4. Hm. I did baking this year, but only because I wanted to.
    He and my daughter picked out the tree; he and the kids decorated it.
    I bought the Xmas decorations and put together some of them (yes, we have a lighted reindeer with moving head); he did the stuff that involved the ladder.
    We buy presents pretty much equally, though I do stocking stuffing for the main reason that he never really had a stocking, whereas I had one into my 20s. 🙂
    The card is a major major project. We design our own (my husband is a graphic designer) and have for years. Our cards are famous among our friends. Usually we sit down in front of Charlie Brown Xmas with glasses of beaujolais and write personal messages in them, but this year my husband just sent them out via Cardstore.com because we’ve been extraordinarily busy and overwhelmed this year.

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  5. We split things up. For our holiday party, my husband is in charge of cleaning and I am in charge of the food. For cards, we each send some out, but we keep one list so that we don’t send some of our friends two cards. We get and decorate the tree together. For the big meal on Christmas Day, we go to my mother’s ….

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  6. Is this a trick question?
    The one thing my mate usually does is the Christmas card, but he bailed this year due to work commitments.
    I did, however, make a move toward equity by telling my kids (18,16,13) that Santa was a tad stressed this year and was enlisting their help in the stocking present department. On his behalf, we each picked names out of a hat, I handed them each a some 20s and they went shopping. Worked out great.

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  8. After I wrote my Christmas cards, I told my husband I’d saved a few for him to write to his family. So far he’s done two, both of which start with “just so you don’t have a heart attack upon hearing from me, you should know that luolin got me to do this”.
    We both bought presents, but I made sure they got mailed.
    We’ll do the tree together (if there are any left to buy at this late date).
    I don’t know how things will work out once we have a kid.

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  9. As Lisa V mentioned, although everyone in the house helps with the holidays I am the ringleader. Beyond ringleader duties:
    Me: Christmas cards, half the cookie baking, cookie delivery, shopping for gifts and for the girls’ Christmas clothes, some decorating, boxing up gifts for grandparents
    Him: the tree, some decorating, shopping for my gift, half the cookie baking
    The Daughters (3 and 5): help with cookie baking, help with tree, create artwork gifts for grandparents, help with box up and delivery of cookies

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  10. I do pretty much everything. My husband helps me when I ask him to, but Christmas is my show. Most of the time I’m very happy to do it because I love Christmas and truly enjoy shopping (online) and decorating and baking and everything else.
    There’s typically one Christmas fit from me. This year’s fit happened this morning. There weren’t any causalities.

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  11. It’s mostly me. Steve sticks the tree in stand and puts the lights on the tree. He sticks the labels on his cards. I get the wreath, put the lights in the window, put the ornaments on the tree, order a 100 cards, print out the labels, make the list of gifts, help him pick out gifts for his parents, buy the presents for the kids, my side of the family, write the menu for christmas eve, delegate food cooking, buy the gifts for the teachers/aides ($200 worth), delegate house cleaning, buy the holiday outfits, make sure the clothes are clean, buy the chocolates, and pack everything up in January. I’m tired.

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  13. The tree, Christmas music, gift-shopping for me and one sibling, USPS waiting, signing cards, loading the car, making two round trip drives to PA — him
    Decorating, cards, sewing and baking projects, shopping, wrapping presents, packing — me.
    Cooking, chocolates, hosting — our parents and grandparents.
    It’s important to distinguish between what has to be done (shopping for the in-laws) and tasks that are really optional (trees, cookie baking, homemade gifts). The later category contains things we do to keep up with the neighbors, or because they have personal importance to us. It’s not fair to expect your spouse to invest lots of time in something s/he may care nothing about, whether that’s sending Christmas cards or decorating the front door.

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  14. Laura’s mention of the $200 worth of teacher/aide gifts makes me thankful for two BRILLIANT things the kids’ school did this year.
    1: The PTA president sent a mass e-mail saying, “We’re taking a collection for teacher gifts. Please drop a check in the PTA inbox.” Not only do the teachers like this better, but it was a huge time-saver.
    2: The school ran something called Santa’s Workshop. They sold small items, candles and hair bands and the like, for $1-3. The girls both did their gift shopping DURING SCHOOL, with no help from me! I could have kissed the coordinator.

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  15. i do absolutely everything with a couple of small exceptions:
    my husband participated in picking out the tree & wielded the saw at the u-cut tree place and the two of us put the tree up together, since it was too big for one person to handle alone. oh, and my husband has shopped for a couple of presents for me & wrapped them.
    other than that, decorating; shopping for our kid, my family & his family; cooking; baking; wrapping; creating, producing and mailing holiday letters — it’s all me.
    i love christmas. my husband could take it or leave it & would actually prefer to leave it.

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  16. I do everything except for some of the grocery shopping. On the other hand, my husband does extra duty on all the non-holiday chores at this time to free me up since he feels that the Christmas work is more creative and that’s my forte.

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