How to Take Back the Holiday Season: Reducing Overwhelm 

First, we have to understand the deeper why behind the overwhelm during the holiday season. It so beyond the just to-do list items, the overwhelm is deeply tied to cultural expectations, gender roles, and emotional labor that disproportionately affect women. Often, tasks are tied to a lack of shared responsibility.

What starts as meaningful tradition quickly becomes unpaid labor. What should be a time of rest becomes a time of performance. And what could be joyful becomes joyless because women are running the entire show from behind the scenes to ensure all the small tasks get done. 

On the surface, buying gifts seems like a joyful tradition. But for many women, it becomes a high-pressure task loaded with emotional responsibility. They’re often expected to remember everyone’s preferences, sizes, wish lists, allergies, in-laws, teachers, coworkers and to do so thoughtfully, creatively, and within budget. What starts as a kind gesture morphs into a logistical and financial burden. Add in societal messaging that equates love with material giving, and women feel guilty if they scale back. They're not just buying gifts, they’re curating emotional experiences and trying to meet invisible standards of “doing it right.”

Cooking holiday meals is rarely just about preparing food. For women, it often involves weeks of planning, organizing recipes, managing dietary needs, coordinating groceries, cooking multiple meals simultaneously, and then cleaning up. The weight of this often falls disproportionately on women because it’s traditionally seen as their domain, especially in multigenerational households. Even when help is available, women are often the ones managing and directing the effort, which keeps the mental load firmly on their shoulders.

Hosting is rarely just about having people over. It often becomes a full-blown production involving cleaning, decorating, setting the mood, organizing activities, managing food and drink, and anticipating every possible guest need. For women, there’s sometimes a social script that says “the home reflects the woman”, so when hosting, the pressure to create a picture-worthy environment is intense. Instead of meaningful connection, the focus shifts to presentation, and the joy gets buried under stress.

Managing family dynamics can sometimes tip women over the edge. During the holidays, women frequently serve as the emotional glue, the person who mediates tension, remembers traditions, anticipates emotional reactions, smooths over disagreements, and tries to ensure everyone is happy. Even if they aren’t the ones with emotional challenges, they’re the ones expected to manage them. 

Modern life is already full. Add in school performances, office parties, travel planning, teacher gifts, winter illnesses, and holiday volunteer work, and suddenly you’ve got a pressure cooker of responsibilities that collide at once during the holiday season. 

Many women already operate in survival mode throughout the year.  The holidays don’t pause real life; they pile on top of it. Because women often serve as the default parent or primary household manager, they’re the ones who stretch themselves thin to make it all happen. And when they do pull it off, it's often met with, “You make it look so easy,” rather than offers to help lighten the load.

Naming these dynamics is crucial. Too often, women internalize the exhaustion and assume it’s a personal failure, when it’s a structural and cultural issue. By bringing awareness to these patterns, we can start to change them. Simplifying the holidays isn't about cutting corners, it's about cutting out the pressure that keeps women in too many roles. When we understand why these tasks become so burdensome, we can begin to dismantle the expectations that make the season overwhelming in the first place.

The first and most important step to lightening the holiday load is having real, honest conversations with your partner or family members. It’s important to talk about how to move you from being the default “holiday manager” to a collaborative participant in a shared celebration.

Before you bring anything up with your partner or family, take time to reflect on what is actually causing the stress. Is it the sheer volume of responsibilities? Is it that you're managing everything and trying to be emotionally available for everyone else? Is it financial strain? The pressure to keep up with expectations? Or simply that you're doing all the thinking and planning behind the scenes?

Timing matters. The best time to have this conversation is before you're already in crisis mode. Approach your partner or family member when things are calm, not in the middle of a meltdown or conflict. Begin with your intentions: that you want the holidays to feel joyful, balanced, and sustainable for everyone, including yourself.

You might say something like, “I’ve been thinking about how the holidays usually go, and I’m realizing I often take on more than I can handle. I want to enjoy this season too, and I think we need to talk about how to make it more balanced.” Frame it as a desire for mutual care and connection, not a confrontation. This sets the tone for cooperation, not defensiveness.

One of the most important and most overlooked steps is naming the mental and emotional labor you’ve been carrying. Many women aren’t just doing physical tasks like shopping or cooking; they’re also remembering what everyone likes and needs, managing family tensions, scheduling around everyone’s availability, and trying to meet everyone's expectations all while pretending it’s no big deal.

You might say, “There’s a lot I do that isn’t visible, like keeping track of what everyone needs, planning how things fit together, and worrying about whether everyone’s happy. That part is really draining and it’s hard to ask for help with things people don’t even realize are happening.” Often, your partner or family members aren’t trying to be unhelpful as they may truly not be aware of the extent of what you’re doing. Bringing the invisible into the light is a powerful first step in redistributing the work more fairly.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of assigning tasks.  While delegation is useful, what’s more transformative is shared ownership. That means having each person take full responsibility for certain areas, not just waiting to be told what to do. Rather than saying, “I need you to help me with decorating,” you might say, “Let’s each pick a few things we’ll fully take care of.” This shifts the dynamic from you being the coordinator to you being a co-participant. It makes the load lighter and the process more equal.

Many women feel caught between their desire to simplify and the weight of tradition. If you’ve always been the one to host every dinner, attend every event, or keep every tradition alive, scaling back can feel like a betrayal, not just to others, but to your own standards.

This is where boundary-setting becomes essential and more powerful when it’s done together. You might say, “I know we usually do Christmas Eve and Christmas Day back-to-back, but I don’t have the capacity for that this year. Can we decide together what’s most meaningful, and let the rest go?” Or, “We’ve been buying gifts for everyone in the extended family, and it’s becoming too much. Would you be open to doing a name draw or setting a spending limit?”

At the heart of these conversations is this truth: you are not a holiday machine. You are a human being who deserves to rest, enjoy, and connect just like everyone else. Having these conversations isn’t always easy, especially if your family system has long relied on you to “just handle it.” But every time you speak up, you disrupt that cycle in a healthy way. You invite others to step up. You model equity, self-respect, and emotional honesty. And you open the door to a more grounded, more joyful holiday season for everyone involved.