christmas, cooking and women
by Varun Inamdar
Many a times, it’s observed that the women majorly handle the back-end of a
celebration in any house. Be it planning the entire proceeding or even
remembering important days in a year, it is the women who make the notes and
set the ball rolling. Who can forget the tedious planning of the evening snacks
while breaking fasts during day-long fasts in Muslim families, to planning snacks
and giveaways as a token of love and appreciation during Diwali, or even planning
feasts during Christmas Eve?
Forget Santa’s little helpers, its women who do all the work at Christmas! Since
time immemorial, be it buying gifts, sending out cards or cooking and prepping for
hours! For women, this is the season to, err, be beleaguered, putting together the
Christmas jam while the men handle other miscellaneous tasks (many even
courteous enough to help out their woman).
True or not, at least, that’s the impression the ‘festive’ adverts give! A whole slew
of them featuring the same theme; knackered mum narrowly avoids becoming a
fatality of fatigue, while her family mooches around not doing much at all. The
men usually appear to ‘vanish’ at the crucial moment, only to reappear with a
bottle of champagne, which is fine; but literally butters no parsnips!
Is the fifties-style division of domestic labour that has been featured in many of
these advertisements a reality? Are women really happy to work up themselves
during the Christmas celebration week, just because ‘it’s all worth it in the end’?
Arguably, the harassed wife/ mother breaking her back to make Christmas lovely
for everyone used to be a stark reality in the Americas of the fifties, especially the
period the advertisers seem to be harking back to. Back then, women generally
stayed at home and men went out to work.
The domestic sphere was an exclusively a female-oriented one, and what was
true for 11 months of the year, became even more so for the 12th.