It’s amazing how women give themselves extra work around the festive season.
Christmas is supposed to be a joyous time but instead women work themselves to a frazzle before, during and sometimes even after Christmas. Instead of enjoying themselves during this season of goodwill, they are collapsing into their beds every night in an exhausted heap. When they entertain, they are on their feet so much that everyone else is entertained.
When the month of December comes around most women could be found discussing how much cleaning they have to do, what they have to purchase for their homes and how they are going to stretch themselves thin. Okay, some women will tell you (there is at least one I know) that they enjoy all that Christmas throws at them; even scrubbing walls. And others would say (and I know one of those too) that they will not be caught in that confusion and while most of us are scurrying to get everything done before December 25 by mid December she usually has her house finished and just watches the rest of us ‘kill ourselves’.
Most of us (and yes it is a woman writing this) do it because it has to be done. Some of us also feel pressured into doing it; you know the feeling, when you look across at your neighbour and you observe her doing that general cleaning. Yes that sort of guilty feeling that you get.
And so we take down the curtains, clean the windows, scrub the walls, clean the cupboards, clean the chairs, empty the cabinet and wash the wares, clean the chairs and the list goes on and on. Of course all of this is done after we ‘break up the house’, meaning we pack away everything. For the life of me I cannot understand if we are convinced that the cleaning has to be done why we can’t start like let’s say September and do it little at a time so when December comes around we are finished. No, instead we wait until December to start and then we are under pressure to finish it all.
And some men would argue that they are also caught up in it but they are a minority as they usually absent themselves during the cleaning or start doing something and then pretend they have something important to attend to. Others would boldly tell you it is a woman’s job and they would argue that they provide the money for us to buy everything new; even when we don’t need it. You would not believe how gleefully I smiled when I passed my neighbour’s house and observed her husband high up on a ladder wiping walls (I said ‘you go sister’).
So we work and we work and work to ensure that everything is sparkling and clean on Christmas day and like brand new. I think that is why some of us give ourselves so much of work, just to get that satisfied feeling on Christmas morning. Well my New Year’s resolution will be to get that feeling long before Christmas day so that I don’t wake up feeling ‘tired like a dog’ on that special day.
When the cleaning and the decorating is finished we are still saddled with the cooking; well most of us anyhow. Some of us (a minority) get help from our spouses. But most of us women are found in the kitchen trying to come up with a special dish to ensure our family members are happy. And when we entertain during that season it is more work for us but that is the time our husbands want their friends to visit and of course they expect their wives to ‘cook up a storm’.
Christmas is indeed a time of merriment and some of us do enjoy the preparation but come on sisters lets work on minimizing the work and increasing the enjoyment during this season. After all Christmas is for everyone and we should be enjoying ourselves to the maximum, so it is either we insist that every family member do their part to contribute to the cleaning and cooking or we start the cleaning much earlier. Remember there are still the gifts to be bought and wrapped; the children’s school parties, concerts, parades and every other activity that you have to be part of. So let’s ease up at least on the cleaning so that we can find more time to really enjoy the other activities.
Now I must end this commentary here as I do need to hurry off to take care of some Christmas business.
