how to be a low-effort, high-reward holiday mom

Until last year, I was a proud holiday under-performer. When other mothers were setting out Lucky Charms and dyeing their toilets green for St. Patrick’s Day, I was gleefully chuckling to myself that my children had never even heard of a leprechaun. I felt like an absolute genius for foregoing elaborate birthday parties in favor of a simple family dinner with a birthday cake.

But then something shifted. My work got a lot busier, and suddenly, life started to feel like the same exact day on repeat, over and over and over. We’d wake up, rush the kids off to school, I’d cram in as much work as I possibly could before 3 p.m., the kids would get home from school, we’d eat dinner, we’d all go to bed. Repeat.

Last year, a few days before Valentine’s Day, I was feeling the mid-February slump big time. I felt a little bored, a little blah, a little meh. Stuck in the endless cycle of work-mom-work-mom-work-mom. And I happened to be at Target (I am never at Target) being inundated by the commercial love bomb of pink and red heart-themed products. So I decided… oh, what the hell. I’ll give this holiday mom thing a shot.

I bought a few fresh pink and red containers of Play-Doh. A few heart-shaped candies. A package of pink balloons. Some Valentine’s paper plates and cups. I was near our favorite bakery later that day and saw little Valentine’s cakes for sale, so I grabbed one.

The night before Valentine’s Day, I popped in an audiobook (my favorite motivation to accomplish tasks that I do not particularly want to do) and got to work. I laid a pink tablecloth on the table and set out Valentine’s plates and cups. I had some leftover red ribbon from Christmas, so I tied it to a few balloons and hung them from the chandelier and taped them to the walls behind our dining table. I wrote “Happy Valentine’s Day!” on three pieces of computer paper, in red marker, and taped those up, too. I tried to cut strawberries into heart shapes and quickly gave up and just cut them into normal shapes. I made a little place setting at the table for each of the boys with the little gifts I had gotten them (Play-Doh, a book, new toothbrushes).

What happened the next day has firmly cemented my