MODERN LIFE SHANE WATSON
So today is big D Day: the day when couples – or one half of them – are most likely to contemplate divorce. Officially, D Day is next Monday, but plenty of us won’t be able to wait that long. (It’s always stuck in my mind that Agnetha from Abba walked out on Björn on Christmas Day 1978: I picture her wearing that tight white catsuit with the frilly flares, leaving him tinkering gloomily on a Yamaha keyboard.) Anyway, that’s Christmas for you. It ratchets everything up, pours petrol on it, and BOOM! Sooner or later someone blows, and guaranteed that someone will be a woman.
Everyone has a theory about why women go hatstand over the Christmas period, but they’re generally way off. Forget about expecting a fabulous Tiffany something, and then, on the day, getting some radio ear muffs. Forget about the sounds of trilling laughter coming from the next room, while you were wrestling a toddler-sized bird out of the oven, On Your Own. Never mind the fact that, having offered to get up and put on the oven on Christmas Day, he got up and put on the grill. This is all so much detail. There is one overriding reason why today is D Day: women are mentally and physically exhausted.
I’ve been racking my brains for examples of wives and mothers who might not be sour-faced husks by this point, just in case I’m overstating it. We know Jools Oliver never goes near the kitchen, but imagine the twinkly winter wonderland Jools will have created for her
five children. Think of all the presents and the tiny stockings! Victoria Beckham will have had the whole lot catered, naturally, but what about the outfit changes, the decorative decisions, the Instagramming pressures? Hardly stress-free.
The point is that, whatever way you cut it,
Divorce Day The postChristmas crack-up when exhausted women just lose it ‘Do you have easy-going relations who work together like a happy team, or are you more Montagues and Capulets?’
whoever you are, Christmas is a giant test of female stamina, at best, and every aspect of our lives at worst. Planning and organisational skills, multitasking under pressure, nurturing (measured, as we all know, in whether you took the time to make your own mince pies).
Women are judged on so many different levels there isn’t the space to cover half of them here: how creative we are (Ah… so just holly? Minimal). How good we have been at choosing presents (for which read, how sensitive, thoughtful, generous). How graceful we were under pressure (roaring “MOVE THE F------ SHELF DOWN!” while balancing trays of roast potatoes on your wrists, scores minus points).
On and on it goes. How big was your Christmas card haul? How pretty is your tree? How delicious was your stuffing and your brandy butter? Do you have grateful children, or sullen ones who still can’t be bothered to open their stockings?
Do you have easy-going relations who work together like a happy, upbeat team, or are you more Montagues and Capulets? Was it just carrots and sprouts with the turkey? Or was everything served with chestnuts and hazelnuts and pancetta? If all this reads like the ravings of a mad person, that will be because you are a man.
And, if you are a man, I know you’re thinking: “OK, if it was all too much, then next year let’s keep it really simple. Give everyone the same present. Buy everything prepped. We don’t even need to have a turkey. We could go out!”
We’ve thought that, too. Many times. But we also know that Christmas lite would result in feelings of worthlessness that would be as bad, if not worse, than the chronic exhaustion we are feeling right now.
So if it isn’t too late, do not suggest it. There’s a good chance that’ll be the thing that tips us over the edge. You know you’re on thin ice already.