Have A Very Merry Gendered Christmas Holiday!
It's Christmas Day! Merry Christmas to everybody who reads this blog that celebrates it! I will be doing... nothing, probably. Maybe making a pizza. Who knows!
Jennifer Kesler over at the Hathor Legacy has a post up about gendered holiday expectations. It made me think about what happens for the annual dinner my family used to have around this time of year.
Usually, my dad and brother cook. My mom's usually too tired from her work at her shop to work, but she will on occasion order stuff from Victoria Station (a steakhouse) and bring it home.
Me, I'm usually in charge of drinks. It means I get the dubious honour of digging out the drink dispenser and buying the drinks. What I tend to do is go out and buy several bottles of various soft drinks. The dispenser takes about three bottles. I'm also in charge of making the ice that will go into the dispenser to cool down the drinks. It has the added bonus of diluting the drinks a bit too, so it's not so sugary. Not that there's anything bad about this! Just. You know. So, the evening might start with a mix of Coca-Cola, Strawberry Fanta,
This happened a year or two and then it became routine.
Other than that, because we don't generally actually celebrate Christmas, everything else becomes more or less irrelevant. Our family friends don't always ask us if we're going to have a Christmas do, although they would check with us to see if we did. If we did, then they'd come to ours, because my dad's a good cook. But if we didn't, then we'd get an invite to go somewhere else to eat. We don't do the whole buying presents thing (my mother buys things for family at random times of the year anyway).
I wonder whether it's just my family, or if it's something across the board for most middle-class Malaysian families like mine...
In any case, Merry Christmas, folks!!
Usually, my dad and brother cook. My mom's usually too tired from her work at her shop to work, but she will on occasion order stuff from Victoria Station (a steakhouse) and bring it home.
Me, I'm usually in charge of drinks. It means I get the dubious honour of digging out the drink dispenser and buying the drinks. What I tend to do is go out and buy several bottles of various soft drinks. The dispenser takes about three bottles. I'm also in charge of making the ice that will go into the dispenser to cool down the drinks. It has the added bonus of diluting the drinks a bit too, so it's not so sugary. Not that there's anything bad about this! Just. You know. So, the evening might start with a mix of Coca-Cola, Strawberry Fanta,
This happened a year or two and then it became routine.
Other than that, because we don't generally actually celebrate Christmas, everything else becomes more or less irrelevant. Our family friends don't always ask us if we're going to have a Christmas do, although they would check with us to see if we did. If we did, then they'd come to ours, because my dad's a good cook. But if we didn't, then we'd get an invite to go somewhere else to eat. We don't do the whole buying presents thing (my mother buys things for family at random times of the year anyway).
I wonder whether it's just my family, or if it's something across the board for most middle-class Malaysian families like mine...
In any case, Merry Christmas, folks!!
I was really frustrated by how gendered the expectations of labor were at our family's Christmas holiday celebration - it was nice to know that there are families that do it differently.
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