My hand hovers over the fancier body wash I really like – on sale this week! – but I pause. “I should wait until January,” I think.

Sure, this holiday-month self-deprivation mentality is partly budget related. I spend a lot more in December, on anyone and everyone besides myself, than other times of the year, and tightening up discretionary spending where I can just makes sense.

But even right now, I could afford the body wash (especially since I’ve racked up so many ExtraBucks at CVS buying for everyone else!) And it doesn’t really make it any more or less affordable if I push the purchase off to January. Digging deeper, I know it’s not REALLY about the money.

It’s just a small manifestation of Holiday Mom Syndrome – the affliction by which we mothers feel we have to sacrifice all of our own wants and needs to make everyone else have a happy, joyful time, while also – and here’s the real rub – entertaining a deep-down fantasy that in the 11th hour, someone else will show up and make our dreams come true.

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My favorite part of the holidays? Sure, I like the lights and the treats and the gifts and the general festive-ness, but if I had to choose just one thing to keep, the thing that most indicates “this is a special season”, it would be Christmas music.

In our family, we start listening the day after Thanksgiving (in non-COVID times, we’d typically be at my sister’s house lounging and playing board games) and it’s on an almost-constant loop for the next month.

I tend to gravitate toward Jazz Standard-era stuff with some choral and instrumental classics and a few folk renditions thrown in. I can be awfully traditional about my holiday music, and it takes me a long time to accept a new Christmas song or – worse – a new artist trying his/her hand at an old classic. It’s nothing against them, it’s just…not what I’m used to, and I admit, during the holiday I really like what I’m used to.

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Right now most of us are in the phase I like to call “Emerging Christmas”, with wrapping paper and craft supplies and half-unpacked decorations everywhere.

But for every pristine Christmas tree photo you see on the Internet, remember that seconds beforehand, a mom was shoving bins and boxes out of sight.

Let’s not hold ourselves to an impossible standard; pulling off this much magic is hard enough without also trying to erase all the evidence.

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You’ve compromised. You’ve made the best of it. You’ve soothed your little ones’ disappointments and fears. You’ve smoothed over rifts with loved ones about broken plans, or you’ve come up with safer alternatives. You’ve balanced your child’s needs with the Greater Good (not ever easy to do, mama.) You’ve dealt with worries about health, worries about mental health, worries about money, worries about relationships. You’ve fed and clothed and soothed your people, you’ve run yourself ragged to create holiday joy and magic; in short, you’ve mothered your ass off, friend.

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Whether you opt to forego most of your usual holiday traditions, or come up with a not-the-same-but-still-fun compromise this year, don’t forget that the elements that make your holiday special: your love for the people close to you, your spirit of giving, your faith, your family, and yeah, your love for glittering baubles or sugar cookies…all those elements are still there. It’s up to each of us to craft a 2020 version of a holiday that makes the most of what we can do, while acknowledging that it’s awfully hard sometimes to give up what we can’t.

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I admit, I have gotten no small amount of pleasure out of the little, incremental “wins” of saving 20% here and there, or watching $10 or $20 cash back on purchases stack up into a decent little pot of cash.

And this experience perfectly illustrated how sometimes taking a few minutes of effort to set yourself up for a reward can be SO worthwhile.

This year, big wins may have felt hard to come by. But there are still little wins to be had, and they totally count – it just may take a few minutes, some effort to get started, and the willingness to slow down and step outside your usual way of doing things.

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