A martyr to the Claus
YOU’RE not the Grinch who stole Christmas! How could you be? You’re the Mammy! You made Christmas! You spent months making Christmas! You made the Christmas cake and the puddings. You bought the book of Christmas stamps and the boxes of Christmas cards, and you wrote, addressed and posted the lot of ‘em.
You purchased and wrapped the Christmas presents. You decorated the tree, hung up all the wreaths, remembered the Christmas potpourri and trailed ivy — ivy you’d collected in the garden — over the picture frames.
You tidied and cleaned and hoovered and polished until the house was shining.
You did the food shopping and organised the drinks. You remembered to get the kids something nice to wear for the annual, long-distance, post-Christmas visit to the relatives. And then, when all of that
was done, when your elegantly decorated home exuded great gusts of seasonal cheer, when the Christmas carols were playing and everyone was enjoying the festive designer nibbles you’d prepared, you turned around and served a massively exhausting, labour-intensive, intricate Christmas dinner complete with all the trimmings.
You sat under your Christmas hat, exhausted but smiling, as everyone showered you with compliments on the food, the house, the decorations and the ambience you nearly killed yourself to create. So, the day after St Stephen’s Day, how come you’re feeling so, er, Grinch-like?
Everybody else is smiling. Replete with your good food, lazing by your roaring fire, enjoying the post-Christmas somnolence as they read their Christmas books, gobble fistfuls of Roses and watch their Christmas DVD. Everybody’s relaxed. You’re not. You’re sizzling with resentment. You’re gritting your teeth so hard it’s a wonder your molars aren’t cracking. You’re muttering furiously to yourself as you push the hoover under their feet to catch the shreds of tinsel littering the carpet and collect the bits of torn wrapping paper.
Relax? You don’t have time to relax. You’re the Mammy. Somebody has to hoover up all the pine needles on the carpet. Somebody has to make stock out of the turkey carcass or else dump the thing. Somebody has to deal with the cold Brussels sprouts, clean out the ashes, set the fire and fill the coal scuttle.
And believe it or not — somehow, every single day, that somebody turns out to be you! Beds have to be made up for visitors. Home-made mince pies and mulled wine have to be rustled up for callers who pop round for a quick chat. Clothes and gifts must be packed for the annual family pilgrimage down the country.
And nobody’s offering to help. They’re dazed by too much food, too much drink and too many late nights. They’re sacking out big-time. They’re comfortable. It’s Christmas. What are you fussing about? Don’t worry, be happy they tell you as they stretch their stockinged feet among the dirty wine glasses littering the coffee table and grope around the box for a few more Roses, scattering empty wrappers on the floor you’ve just hoovered.
But you’re Mammy, aka the Christmas heroine. You can’t relax. You haven’t the time. Enough already! Take mother-of-three Lisa O’Callaghan, who, for the past five years, has been forced to endure the post-Christmas no-man’s-land along with her 19-month-old son and five-year-old daughter — while her husband and adult son take off to spend three weeks in the Sahara: “I’m really left in the thick of it,” says the Celbridge, Co Kildare housewife. “Last year, they went on St Stephen’s Day. I’m left to clear up after Christmas, take down the tree and put away the decorations.
“I think being a stay-at-home mum means you don’t get bank holidays or weekends off. I’ll still peel the vegetables, get the dinner and hoover up the tinsel. They seem to be oblivious to the fact that I’m on my feet feeding people and minding the kids, even though everyone else is on holidays.
“Nobody picks up the tinsel or the sweet papers, nobody collects the torn wrapping paper — they’ll walk over the wrapping. I don’t think they even see it.”
As the bonhomie of Christmas Day recedes, more drudgery looms: “It’s probably even worse after Christmas because there are loads more toys to tidy up and you’re continually hoovering up pine needles that nobody else ever sees. They’re all still on holidays and I’m still going. They all love the open fire at Christmas-time but nobody wants to clean out the ashes. I like to keep it Christmassy, but it’s hard work,” she says.
The kids love to have their friends in: “The friends come in and you’re expected to serve them something nice. My son would be saying ‘is there anything to eat there, Mum?’ and I’d be rustling up something for them. I’m the one hoovering and getting everything ready, if someone’s calling over Christmas. I look forward to it, but Christmas is heavy going,” she says.
That period between Christmas and the New Year is frustrating says *Margaret, a mother of three adult children, all of whom make a big thing of boomeranging back to spend quality time with the parents over Christmas.
“Christmas is over and you’re on a low because you suddenly realise that instead of being able to put your feet up, you’re simply facing into more of the same. I have one adult son who comes to stay with us over Christmas. Once he arrives, he just sits back and expects to be waited on.”
He and his father, she says, enjoy the post-Christmas peace-and-quiet while Margaret cleans the house and does the grocery shopping in preparation for the next big event; the arrival of her two adult daughters, their husbands, and their small children for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. “You have to literally do another Christmas dinner for New Year’s Eve but nobody wants to help. Nobody wants to clean up the house, nobody, including my husband, even wants to clean out the fire.
“Between Christmas and the New Year my time is spent cleaning and tidying and getting ready for the girls’ arrival for the New Year.
“My adult son will stay in bed in the run-up to their arrival and wouldn’t help to save his life. My husband makes himself scarce out in the garage.
“When the girls and their families arrive, my husband and son are on hand to greet them — while I’m left scurrying around getting drinks, distributing nibbles, preparing dinner and making sure the fire is lit, the beds are made and the house is clean and that there’s plenty of food in the fridge. Everyone else just relaxes and sits back while I keep going like the Duracell bunny on the TV.
“Between Christmas and the New Year I do nothing but work and everyone else does nothing but sit around and finish off the chocolates,” she says.
Mother-of-one Tracey Andrews loves Christmas — but hates the clutter it makes:
“What annoys about the days after Christmas is when there are toys and presents scattered around the house — everywhere you look my son has opened and left things.
“I feel like I’m left to do everything — I find I’m constantly trying to keep the house clean for people to drop in after Christmas.
“You’re going constantly and I’d love a day off. I like the house to be tidy and I’m going around constantly putting stuff upstairs and telling my son to bring things up to his room.”
There’s a real cost to being the Christmas heroine says psychologist and positive psychology expert Deirdre MacIntyre — and that cost, she says, is “sheer Christmas martyrdom.”
“You’re paying the price and everyone else is reaping the benefits. Stop. Cease. Desist,” she says.
If you’re a Mammy, it’s in your DNA to ‘make’ Christmas Christmassy, says MacIntyre, herself a mother-of-three who decided several years ago to swap the perfect Christmas for the sane one.
“As a Mammy, you’re hard-wired to make Christmas perfect, but if you keep this up you’ll become the Christmas martyr.”
And the Christmas Martyr, she says, often ends up frantic, frazzled and fighting with everyone.
“One year, I found myself icing a cake at 11.30pm that I knew none of us was going to eat,” she says.
So what to do? Delegate, says McIntyre.
“Once your kids are old enough, delegate. Divvy up the tasks and share them out. Let go of your need for perfection because they won’t do things as well as you, but you have to accept that things won’t be done to your standards, but that’s fine. Boil it down to the essentials, prioritise and treat everything else as an optional extra,” she says.
*Not her real name
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