Big Gifts on Little Christmas, Jan. 6, 2021

Democrats take the U. S. Senate!

Will men do more around the house in 2021?

Democrats taking back the majority in the US Senate on Little Christmas is a gift beyond all measure! 

Another potential and important one is this: men relieving women of household tasks stemming from an old Irish tradition on Little Christmas. In Ireland, January 6th was also called Women’s Christmas because men would take on all household duties for that day so women could hang out with their friends and party.

Photos from https://thecladdagh.com/blog/womans-little-christmas/

https://www.dailyedge.ie/nollaig-na-mban-1251251-Jan2014/

January 6th Women's Christmas

In Ireland, Little Christmas is also called Women's Christmas (Irish: Nollaig na mBan), and sometimes Women's Little Christmas. The tradition, still strong in Cork and Kerry, is so called because Irish men take on household duties for the day. Goose was the traditional meat served on Women's Christmas. Some women hold parties or go out to celebrate the day with their friends, sisters, mothers and aunts. As a result, parties of women and girls are common in bars and restaurants on this night. (From Wikipedia)

I started writing this post in the very early morning of Little Christmas when I learned CNN had called the Senate race in Georgia for Rev. Warnock and that Ossoff was leading; I had a hunch they would both win, and the headline that popped into my head was “Big Gifts on Little Christmas!”

Later, when I started researching Little Christmas, which we called the Epiphany when I was growing up, I found that in Ireland Little Christmas was called Women’s Christmas and why.

Then I had my own epiphany! The real gifts for 2021 are not only the progressive political agenda Georgia had voted for by putting two democrats in the Senate but could be the birth of something bigger: the true embracing by all Americans of a progressive domestic agenda in the home that is still pretty radical in practice in many parts of the U. S. What is this agenda? It is that men take on their full share of household tasks and parenting responsibilities and not leave it all or most of it to women. Our culture as a whole still shames mostly women for a household in disarray and for lapses in parenting.

Before I had a chance to post these thoughts to my blog, the shameful events of the desecration of and attack on the US Capitol occurred. My thoughts about men being all in to do more around the house seemed so small in the wake of this terrorist attempt to throw out the results of a free and fair election by attacking the foundations of democracy.

Now a day later I am thinking, “Is there true democracy in the home if women are responsible and held accountable for more tasks?” Who stands up and says, “It’s not fair that women do so much more?” It is difficult for each woman alone in her own home to counter the mob mentality (the judgment of others)—that women should be the primary care takers of the home and if things are a not perfectly in order, it’s her fault. Women must encourage each other to bring this unfairness to light and to keep trying to correct it. 

Let us hope that Kamala Harris, the first woman Vice President at the helm of the senate, will bring new awareness to the unfair burden of running a household and caring for children placed on women—never more apparent than during this COVID-19 pandemic.

May this Old Christmas 2021 usher in a new era for women—more shared responsibility of household tasks between them and their partners not on only one day of the year Little Christmas, but every day!