Santa doesn't magic holiday magic – moms do 🎄

and they're really burnt out

Happy holiday season, everyone! Or as I found out in my latest for Yahoo, happy moms-do-everything-and-get-really-burnt-out-season :)

Here are some excerpts from my latest piece, which I really hope you go read in its entirety: Who’s really conjuring all that holiday magic? Hint: It’s not Santa.

reparations for the holiday season begin early for Cassi Romanos, a 30-year-old mother in Connecticut — really early, before the leaves even begin to change colors. Romanos starts making lists of possible Christmas presents for her four children and planning which celebrations her family will take part in beginning in September.

By the time December rolls around, Romanos is in full holiday mode — stressing out; buying, wrapping and hiding presents; and cooking and cleaning ahead of family visits. She also does Elf on the Shelf for her kids, a newly popular tradition that entails finding creative hiding spots for a toy elf, purportedly sent from Santa to make sure kids are behaving. “Sometimes I’m like, why am I this crazy?” Romanos says about the added effort of the elf. “But it’s so pressured that you aren’t a good mom if you don’t do Elf on the Shelf.”

In an age where you can compare your Christmas photos with those of millions of others, the efforts parents undertake to make a memorable — and Instagrammable — holiday season are more intense than ever. And in many families, the majority of those efforts fall on the shoulders of overburdened moms.

Perhaps that comes as no surprise to any woman who is in or has any familiarity with modern marriage and family. After all, they’re still bearing the brunt of domestic responsibility in their homes. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that in 2024, women on average did 25 more minutes of housework a day, while men somehow finagled 50 more minutes of leisure time (over the course of a week, that adds up to hours of difference). Another study found that mothers manage some 71% of all household tasks, from scheduling to planning to cooking.

That unequal division of household labor naturally carries through to the holiday season, a veritable marathon of planning, scheduling, decorating and familial upkeep. In a NovemberYouGov/Yahoo poll, 60% of married and partnered women reported doing more of the holiday planning in their household, as opposed to 14% of married and partnered men. Only about a quarter of women (26%) said they and their partner split the holiday work equally (tellingly, 40% of married and partnered men reported an equal division of labor, reflecting how differently men and women gauge their own contributions).

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On Instagram, Paige Connell, a 35-year-old mother of four in Massachusetts, talks about being a working mom, managing the mental load and figuring out childcare. “I think women, from a very young age, are conditioned to think about other people and their experiences and how to make other people’s lives easier,” Connell says. “But I think that is also compounded by living in the year 2025 and the pressure that comes from the societal expectations of what you see on Pinterest or on your Instagram feed and what standard you’re being held to.”

There’s a sense from mothers that I spoke to that if they didn’t juggle it all, things just wouldn’t get done — and their children would suffer. “What’s the most important thing is making memories,” Gould says. “So if I don’t plan on going to see Santa, then Santa is not going to be seen.”

Connell, who often makes content about finding ways to share the burden in her own marriage, says that sometimes it just feels easier for mothers to take the lead because they already know what needs to be done. “[Moms] know exactly what to tell the mother-in-law to buy because she already has that running list in her brain or on her phone,” she says. “[But] I always tell people, nothing changes if we don’t say anything about it.” In Connell’s case, she and her husband have created a holiday spreadsheet to keep track of their budget for presents and what they’re choosing to buy their children.

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Corinne Low, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the economics of gender, says deeply ingrained gender stereotypes and norms are at play here. “Men don’t think anybody’s going to judge them or evaluate them based on what their house looks like for the holidays or how good of a meal they serve,” Low says.

While American dads today spend more time caring for their children than fathers in past generations, there are still major gaps. “And when it comes to that magic-making behind the scenes, when it comes to making sure we have enough ornaments to go on the tree or that everybody has matching pajamas in the right sizes, moms are the ones who are doing it. For the dads, it would almost not even occur to them. That’s why people call it invisible labor because it’s the labor that it takes to run a household and to make a childhood beautiful and special. But so often it goes completely unnoticed.”

As a relatively new mom, I find this deeply depressing. It’s difficult to contend with the fact that little seems to escape the lopsidedness of gender dynamics and how so much tends to fall on women’s shoulders.

“I remember being up until three in the morning wrapping presents and feeling like I had to get the food done. Like, am I ready for the next day? Did I write the notes from Santa? Are my in-laws happy in the rooms they’re sleeping in? Does everybody have towels?” says Colette Jane Fehr, a couples therapist. “The logistical load [during the holidays] is magnified. It’s quadrupled. Most women roll out of the holidays feeling exhausted, depleted, resentful and anxious.”

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So tell me: are you in full moms-do-it-all-holiday-mode? Or have you somehow figured out a better way to exist? (I’m counting myself really lucky that I get to lean on my daughter’s grandmother who brings all the holiday magic and all I have to do is show up with the cute toddler.)

While I have you: reminder that my book Like, Follow, Subscribe: Influencer Kids and the Cost of a Childhood Online is available for pre-order (and would make a great Christmas present!!). You can buy it anywhere books are sold.