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Traditions I Won’t be Doing This Holiday Season

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TRADITIONS I WON’T BE DOING THIS HOLIDAY SEASON

By: Haley Rose | December 5, 2024

It was a beautiful, windless, and—shockingly—tourist-free day in the Marina of San Francisco, and despite the chaos of the morning, I felt optimistic that, for once, we might get a photo of the three of us that I’d actually love. Photos and I are natural enemies, but unlike my last six years in the city, the weather was nothing short of perfect: a good omen. As the photographer moved around us, encouraging our drooling but perpetually happy son to direct his little smile toward the natural light and the camera’s clicks, I reveled in the thought of the marketing campaign-worthy card that would surely result from this laborious charade.

But two weeks later, when I finally clicked through the 30 finalists, I felt, as my friend Emma would say, like an old shoe. My stubbornly straight, heavy mane had successfully smothered my blowout; my carefully applied makeup had not survived the morning activities, leaving me unwelcomely bland, and my outfit—what was I thinking? Where was my waist?

This was, to me, another example of my expectations not meeting reality.

But isn’t that how it always goes this time of year?

As women, we’re handed a script each holiday season, one that suggests we must craft flawless, Hallmark-filtered moments. Christmas (Hanukkah and all the winter celebrations), we’re told, is not just a holiday; it’s a project—a time to showcase how we’re keeping every ball in the air, making it all magical, pulling it all together. And so, with monumental effort, we keep rising to the occasion, replicating elaborate traditions year after year in an effort to “soak it all in,” to be grateful, present, and joyful. And this year in particular, I feel a particular need to create memorable moments of this “fleeting time” when my child is little.

But the irony is, every hour I would spend carefully curating this holiday magic is an hour I spend away from just being with him—truly with him, not coordinating, monitoring, or stage-managing the day. And my growing fear now is that while I prepare the world so perfectly around me, I may turn around to discover that my child has suddenly grown up.

When I look back on my childhood, the memories I cherish most weren’t the “perfect” moments at all. They were simple, unexpected. Not the kind of orchestrated simple that women work so hard for, the appearance of effortlessness that took countless hours to craft. I’m talking about eating ice cream after a bad day with my mom, laughing over something that couldn’t have been planned, and being with my family in a way that was unforced and ordinary but somehow deeply meaningful. The times when I felt truly loved and seen—those are the moments that lasted. Not the decor, not the stocking stuffers.

Yet somehow, I’ve allowed the holiday machine to convince me that a good Christmas is a busy one, an elaborate one, tradition-heavy and photo-worthy. We’re trained to think that these beautiful memories require extravagance, that everything must be just right when really, everything that was right about my favorite childhood memories was uncomplicated: love, presence, and a kind of joyful attention that had nothing to do with creating a “perfect” experience.

So, this year, the traditions I’m letting go of are the traditions of more and of expectations. No more frantic to-do list, no more milestones I think we “need” to check off. No more obligatory moments. Because if there’s one thing I truly want my child to remember about these early years, it isn’t that I was doing so much, but that I was being with them. That I showed up, imperfectly, with the love and attention that no “perfect” holiday could ever replace.

Haley Rose is a new mom who usually feels like she has no idea what she’s doing, and has too many things to do. In a world of never-ending checklists, she’s trying to live at a more glacial pace.

When she’s not being a mom, a wife, a dog mom, and attempting to be a decent human, she works in spatial computing, a total niche, which is why she no longer explains what she does to people. You might also find her in the garage sizing up her tool belt and trying to figure out how to use her laser level.