Women make Christmas a competition

IN YESTERDAY’S Mail, Esther Rantzen wrote a hugely engaging piece about her daughter Rebecca’s competitive Christmassing, which includes rising at 5am on the Big Day to ensure everything comes off just right.

Esther, meanwhile, admitted to having been distinctly casual in her approach, cheerfully detailing stories of botched Christmas puddings doused in mayonnaise instead of brandy butter.

There is a bittersweet irony in the way we post-feminists fetishise the domestic aspects of Christmas our mothers were all too relieved to be able to turn their backs on.

Blame Nigella, blame the have-it-all mentality, blame working mother guilt; but I don’t recall my own mum making nearly such a song-and-dance of it.

My generation, by contrast, seem to go out of our way to take on more than we can reasonably manage without an army of staff, to let everyone know exactly how exhausting the whole thing is, elevating the entire process to a competitive spectator sport.

Ostensibly, of course, we are doing it ‘for the family’. But the truth is, the only people we really care about impressing are other women.

It’s our version of machismo, the female equivalent of refusing to ask travel directions, or insisting you know how to fix that leaky sink when in fact you don’t even know where the stopcock is.