Once upon a time, there was a mother of four who found herself stressed out around the holidays. Her to-do list grew by the day, and whenever “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” came on the radio, she would roll her eyes and change the station. She felt like she had accidentally signed up for the Holiday Planning Committee and there wasn’t any room left on the Having Fun Committee.

As with emotional labor in general, holiday emotional labor tends to fall on mothers like a ton of bricks. Even in households where both parents work, one person is in charge of gathering all the wish lists, buying all the presents, wrapping all the presents, doing all the baking, researching photographers for the holiday card, and coordinating the holiday schedules. And this, my friends, is bullshit.

Do you feel like you are under immense pressure to make the holidays fun and magical for your family, and it’s sucking up YOUR enjoyment of the holidays? Does the fact there are just 40 days until Christmas make your eyes bug out? Will your bank account run dry before you’ve paid for all the presents and pictures and parties and food? Want to to step off the crazy train? Here’s how:

1. Write down every single thing that needs to be done or purchased or planned or cleaned or attended between now and January 2.

2. Inform your family that you are stepping down as chairman and sole member of the Holiday Planning Committee.

3. Show them the list, and ask them to pick one thing that is the most important to them. Put those things on a new list.

4. Throw the first list in the garbage.

Now you have your new holiday plan! Simple!

Or perhaps you prefer a less extreme plan. In that case, grab the original list out of the garbage, and hold a family meeting. Explain what you are willing and able to do, and let them know that they need to take on anything else that is important to them, or it gets crossed off the list. This could include:

1. Holiday concerts: if your child takes music lessons, consider not participating in the holiday concert(s). You might even cross off lessons of any kind for the month of December.
2. Attending parties: if these stress you out, or waste your precious babysitting budget, don’t go. Boom.
3. Hosting parties: again, this is not a requirement. If you’ve traditionally hosted, it is within your rights to cancel or make a new plan. Tell everyone it’s now a potluck, or move the whole thing to a restaurant instead. If it’s at your house, don’t waste your time cleaning — that way, your messy friends will feel better about their own houses and your judge-y friends will get to feel superior. Everybody wins!
4. Holiday cards: be sure to go to at least one wedding every year so you have a picture ready. Address envelopes for your friends and family, then leave your partner’s half of the cards for them to do. Or, if you really want to save time, take a hiatus from the holiday card this year.
5. Holiday baking: If this is not your thing, cross it off the list. Or, if you will get kicked off Instagram for not posting a picture of your children decorating cookies, buy a kit at the grocery store or a gingerbread house kit at Trader Joe’s and call it a day. If your spouse will die without some spritz cookies or haystacks or lefse during the holidays, let them know they’re welcome to look up the recipes, buy the ingredients, and get to it. If they ask nicely, maybe you’ll help.
6. Decorations: most people don’t know this, but if you have space above your kitchen cabinets and DON’T fill it with holiday greenery and/or a Christmas village, Santa will still stop at your house. Likewise, every room does not, in fact, need its own tree. And keep in mind that paring down decorations saves you time twice: putting them up AND taking them down.
7. Gifts for adults: take a machete to this list. If you give gifts to grown siblings, discuss exchanging names or scrapping them altogether. If you get pushback, feel free to simply bow out of the gift exchange (“You all want to keep doing it; that’s cool; we just won’t be participating this year.”) Same with friends: consider scheduling a date for drinks or coffee instead, or give them a gift certificate for babysitting services. DO NOT, under any circumstances, buy a few small gifts “just in case” someone gives you a gift and you don’t have one for them.
8. Gifts for in-laws: inform your spouse that they are in charge of procuring wish lists and purchasing (and wrapping!) gifts for their own parents and grandparents and siblings. They may wait until the last second and then buy something that is all wrong. Remind yourself that this is not your problem.
9. Gifts for children: again, consider exchanging names instead of buying for everyone. Or, if you will all be together over the holidays, think about a group outing instead: ninja warrior gym, laser tag, pool party, the movies, tickets to the Children’s Theater or a museum. For your own children, dial it down. A lot of parents like the “something they want, something they need, something to wear, something to read” rule for gifts. In our family, that is still sixteen presents that I don’t want to buy. We used to buy just one gift for each child, but now we have switched to a family outing of some kind (happily, this has coincided with the most recent Star Wars movies being released around Christmas time).
10. Gifts for your spouse: early in our marriage, Jeremy and I would go out to eat and then head to the mall, pick out our own presents, then go home and wrap them to be opened on Christmas morning. Now, we just cut out a step and, if we buy something for ourselves in December, mention in passing “This can be my Christmas gift”. Done!

There are those among you who are horrified at this list. You have immediately come up with your own list of reasons why you cannot possibly cross one thing off your to-do list, or worse, leave it to your husband to do. Maybe your favorite things about the holidays ARE the errand-running and online shopping and cleaning and bank-account-draining. If so, great! You do you. As for me, I’ll be over here in front of the fire, reading a book and enjoying the whiskey Advent calendar I bought myself. Happy holidays indeed.