It’s been a minute since there was a baby in our house for the holidays, but now that we’re foster parents, there’s a little baby with us for now (whether they’ll be with us for Christmas itself is a question mark, but for now, for the foreseeable season, that’s our situation).  And since I last had a baby for the holidays some things have…changed.  Or maybe changed isn’t the best word.  Things have amped up.  Right? It’s not just my feed that’s gone a little bananas…right?

For instance, it’s now apparently a requirement for babies and kids and parents to all wear adorable matching holiday jammies that cost two arms and a leg, and you’d better make it into an Instagram post or you’re failing your holiday duties as a modern mama!  Matching everything!

It’s not that I begrudge cuteness, please understand!  Lord knows I’ve bought my fair number of adorable pajama sets and have eagerly taken snapshots, but it seems like things are amplified, things are HOLLIER and JOLLIER and you HAVE to get these jams or the holiday isn’t complete, and parents had better hop in on the action and get holiday jams too, and maybe some for the dog and the cat and the lady next door and your mail carrier and and and and and…

It’s too much, y’all.  I love the idea of a sweet holiday tradition like wearing matching clothes, but the pressure, man, the pressure!  It’s kind of insane to scroll through my Instagram feed and feel like I’m somehow not fully committing to the magic of the season if the kids aren’t in buffalo plaid footie pajamas.  And for the record, they do have them!  But it was more by accident that that happened than by concurrent planning.  So I’m seriously not taking a low shot at the whole idea.  But the pressure….yeah, I’m side-eyeing that, because it feels like everything is supposed to be extra magical and extra special around the holidays, and the majority of the pressure to pull all that off lands on the feet of me, moms everywhere.  If there weren’t already footie pajamas in our house, I’d feel an insane amount of pressure to make it happen STAT.  And that pressure would 100% fall to me along with all it entails.

You know what I mean.

Pick out the matching jams.  Take the photo.  Make the family photo album.  Make the memories.  But it’s not just the (legit fun!) making of memories…it’s all the legwork involved.  And I hate to think that this continued pressure to amp up the magic and sparkle and delight means an ever-increasing amount of pressure to be perfect, be more magical, be more full of wonder and whimsy…

A little dusting of magic and whimsy is delightful.  But feeling the screws always turning on the pressure dial to make it all happen is…less delightful.

So, where does that leave me with the matching jammies and all that festive fun?  I’m not a grinch.  I love those things.  But as we head into the holiday season, I’m trying my best to resist the urge to turn our family into a catalog page.  I want our memories to be real, and lovely, and fun.  But I want them to not just be mirror images of what a catalog or a website thinks our holiday memories should look like.  So while the buffalo plaid may be strong in our house this season, I like to think it’s because it’s a pretty solid print, and not just because I’m being told to like it.

I want to enjoy our family for what we are, in all our messy idiosyncrasies, and sometimes that means matching jammies, and sometimes it means if someone prefers to wear her Peppa Pig jammies, that’s okay too.

This season, let’s not let the season kill the season.  Revel in what brings you real joy, and let the rest go.  We are good mamas no matter how many or how few matching footie pajama sets we lounge in on Christmas morning, I pinky-swear.