My Response to Rage Against the Minivan's "Let's Bring the Holidays Down a Notch"

I, like so many of you, felt vindicated by Rage Against the Minivan’s rant about toning down holidays.
For about a minute.

Then something started to nag me and wouldn’t stop all night, so here I am. Her blog post now has 660 comments (almost all of which agree with her) and hundreds and hundreds of re-postings on facebook.  That means a lot of us found validation in the tearing down of others. There’s something wrong with that.

I don’t do anything for St Patrick’s day for my kids, I don’t do elaborate birthday parties or give them anything for Easter besides a small basket of candy. I don’t make home-made Valentines or do Valentine’s breakfasts or do Elf on the Shelf. But I know many moms who do. And I guarantee they don’t do it to make you feel bad. I guarantee they don’t do it to raise the expectations of motherhood to unattainable levels. They do it because it’s a way for them to fuel their creativity, to create moments of joy with their children, and to simply break up the monotony of mommy days.

Maybe there is a small percentage of moms who splash it all over facebook and pinterest merely to show off. I don’t know any of those people. I’m sure there are a few out there. I’d say those people have issues with self-worth.

But who is the one placing expectations on me? It’s me. I own my expectations, no one else can force them on me. If I feel threatened or unworthy when I see pictures of my friend’s happenings with their children, it’s my problem, not theirs. We all put ourselves out there with social media in one way or another. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be looking.

Sure, I’d like it if we generally agreed the holidays should be toned down. But I’d never stand in the way of someone being creative or make them feel guilty for it. And if someday I do feel like going “big” for one holiday or birthday I’m not going to let the idea that it might make other moms feel bad stop me.

This Rage Against the Minivan mom is a great writer (I read through some of her posts last night) and that is her way of being creative. There is potential to be jealous and resentful of her success. But that’s not her problem.

I personally don’t need permission to be the kind of mom that I want to be. As moms, we already have enough to feel guilty about with no external forces being involved. Is uniting together in our anger and validation really doing anything productive if we’re united against others who, in the end, probably have the same underlying goals? We all struggle. None of us are perfect. If you think someone is portraying themselves as such that’s your issue. We all want to teach our kids, love them, and try to stay sane along the way.