It’s December, and somewhere right now a woman is writing her mother-in-law’s Christmas card. She’s also buying gifts for her husband’s siblings, wrapping presents for people she sees once a year, and mentally running through a checklist that grows longer by the day.
Her partner, meanwhile, is blissfully unaware of any of this.
If this sounds familiar to you, you’re not alone. Despite all the progress we’ve made on gender equality, there’s something about Christmas that seems stuck in a different era.
What the Research Says
An article by Tim Harford in the FT a couple of weeks ago prompted me to look at this – he outlined a 1990 study in theJournal of Consumer Research that confirmed what many women already knew. Women buy more gifts, start shopping earlier, and put considerably more thought into the process.
The title says it all: “More Than a Labor of Love.” Christmas shopping is still widely treated as “women’s work.” (See below for a more up to date survey!)
There’s a term for this invisible effort: kin keeping. It refers to the ongoing work of maintaining family relationships, from organising visits to remembering birthdays. Christmas gift-giving is really just an extension of this year-round responsibility.
The Mental Load
The “mental load” refers to the invisible work of remembering, planning, and coordinating everything that keeps a household running. At Christmas, this load gets heavier: the gift list, the budget, the wrapping, the cards, the food, the hosting, and the endless small decisions nobody else notices.
But it goes beyond the obvious tasks.
Someone has to remember which relative doesn’t eat dairy, coordinate travel so both sets of grandparents feel equally valued and make sure the children’s teachers get thank you gifts before term ends. Someone has to track what was given last year to avoid repeats, manage expectations when budgets are tight, and smooth over any family tensions before they spoil the day.
Fourty-four percent of women report increased stress during the holiday season, compared to 31 percent of men. More than a quarter of mothers say it took a month or longer to recover afterwards.
The irony is hard to miss. While women are doing most of this work, the cultural narrative still portrays Christmas as a time of relaxation. However, for many women, the “most wonderful time of the year” feels more like a second job.
How much weight should we really give to decades-old studies on gender roles? Times have changed a lot! As Corinne Low highlights in her new book Femonomics, the world isn’t stuck in 1990. By 2015, American women between 25 and 45 were spending around 10 more hours a week at work compared to 1975, while their housework hours had dropped by about the same amount.
So, shouldn’t all those old-fashioned Christmas chores be a thing of the past? Well, not exactly. According to Low, women also clock in six extra hours a week caring for kids. (Yes, dads are helping more, but they’re still playing catch-up!)
And as it turns out, housework isn’t really influenced by the size of anyone’s paycheck. Low points out, “A man who earns just 20 percent of the household income does about as much housework as a man raking in 80 percent!”
And if you ask economist Bernd Stauss, whose 2023 book chapter is cheekily titled “Gifts and Gender: Santa Claus is a Woman,” there’s just something about Christmas that keeps those traditional roles firmly in place—no matter how much things change the rest of the year.
What Can You Do?
A few practical steps might help. The first is simply talking about it. Many partners don’t realise how much is being done behind the scenes. A shared checklist can make the invisible work visible.
Writing down every task, from buying the tree to sending thank-you notes, shows just how much is involved. Then it’s a matter of dividing it fairly. It’s also worth questioning which traditions actually matter and which ones are just habits.
Christmas gift-giving may seem like a small thing. But it reflects something much bigger about who carries the load in our homes. That’s a conversation worth having, preferably before December arrives next year.
Final Thoughts
This piece has left me quite conflicted as my partner is a women who does all of the above for me and my family. In my defence, most of the division of work in our family is about time and I am getting a bit better but my new year’s resolution is Pull My Weight at Christmas!
