Let this be the year

Dear Mamas of 2020, For years you have honored everyone else’s holiday traditions. The ones you had growing up, the ones your husband had, even though they all seemed impossible to keep. With a million places to be and multiple families with different expectations, you did it. You sacrificed your own holiday joy to make sure everyone’s desires were met.

You smiled your way through parties, even though you had cranky little ones & napping schedules to manage (a season that somehow everyone seems to forget is so hard and exhausting already). “It’s Christmas!” they would say. “She will survive one day without a nap!”

But they were not the ones nursing a screaming baby in the upstairs bedroom while everyone else enjoyed themselves downstairs. Even so, they still put expectations on you. To buy the gifts, to send the Christmas cards, to do all the things say and yes to every invitation because “this is how we have always done it, it is our family tradition.” And yet, nobody ever asked you what you wanted your family traditions to be.

2020 has given you a gift. Let this be the year all of that changes.

Let this be the year you create your own traditions. That you spend more time in your jammies eating cookies and watching Christmas movies than carting your kids everywhere because you feel like you have to. The year you drive around looking at Christmas lights and drinking hot chocolate. The year you spend hours playing in the snow because you have nowhere else to be. The year you could care less about what your house looks like, because there will be no parties. The year you cozy up by the fire with a pile of your favorite Christmas books or board games.

Your parents and your in-laws had their turn to make holiday memories with their children and now it is yours. These are your kids and you are the boss. While 2020 has not been easy, it has given you the gift of choice back. The choice to honor your families’ physical and mental health over others. You have the excuse to say “I am just not comfortable with that, not this year.” Christmas was never supposed to be about a calendar filled to the brim with festive events. It is about feeling the magic of the season in the simplest of ways. And I believe the most magical place we have is our home. ❤️