Michelle Wollaston On Why Modern Christmas Exhausts Women: The Story Behind the Season

Christmas didn’t begin as the season we know today. It didn’t begin with Santa, tinsel, manic shopping, or a man in a red suit. It didn’t even begin as a Christian holiday. The roots of December celebrations pre-date Christianity entirely, woven through ancient pagan solstice rites honouring the return of light and the turning of the year. These were communal gatherings centred on earth, rhythm, rest, and renewal — not consumption, performance, or perfection.

Everything shifted when Emperor Constantine made a defining political decision. In the 4th century, Constantine converted from paganism to Christianity — not out of divine revelation, but strategy. The Roman Empire was fracturing, and he saw the chance to use religion as a unifying force… and we all know how that worked out.

People were deeply attached to their pagan rituals, so instead of erasing them, Constantine repackaged them. He aligned an existing solstice festival with the celebration of Christ’s birth — a date not supported by scripture, but extremely useful for consolidating power. Christmas as we know it was born from politics long before it was wrapped in theology.

As the new religion spread, men in power determined which texts were included, which were discarded, and which stories were silenced. The Bible wasn’t written by Jesus or his disciples — it was compiled, edited, and canonised under Constantine’s rule, shaped by the priorities of the men constructing the early Church.

The feminine stories — the ones that held nuance, intuition, mystery, and balance, including the long-ignored Gospel of Mary Magdalene — were diluted or erased entirely. Order was restored, certainly, but at the cost of diversity, complexity, and the voices of women.

Over time, other men continued re-authoring December. Long before the red suit, the figure we now call Santa emerged from much older origins — the Norse god Odin, who rode through the winter sky leaving gifts, and Saint Nicholas, a 4th-century bishop known for quiet acts of generosity. As these stories travelled across Europe, they blended, softened, and shifted shape, eventually merging into a single winter gift-giver.

By the 19th and 20th centuries, that figure was reinvented entirely. Writers, illustrators, and advertisers transformed him into a commercial icon, reshaping Christmas into an economic engine. The modern Santa — cheerful, red-suited, and instantly recognisable — is frequently credited to Coca-Cola. While they didn’t invent him, their global marketing campaigns cemented the image we now accept as tradition.

What we celebrate today is a deliberate fusion of Odin, St Nicholas, European folklore, and commercial creativity — crafted not by communities or spiritual leaders, but by men in boardrooms, artists on commercial briefs, and companies pursuing profit. Tinsel, glossy wrapping paper, stockings, the “perfect holiday” aesthetic, and the pressure to create magic all grew not from ritual or meaning, but from marketing strategy. Each generation inherited a little more glitter and a little less truth.

And the layers built from there.

The more commercial Christmas became, the more invisible labour grew — and women, predictably, absorbed it. Planning, hosting, gifting, cooking, coordinating, smoothing tensions, holding the emotional load, and creating the “magic.” What began as a political strategy, and then an economic one, became a domestic one too: women carrying the season while men authored the myth.

Imagine how different December would feel if we had never inherited this version of Christmas at all. Imagine if meaning, ritual, and connection had been allowed to evolve naturally — without the interference of emperors, politicians, marketers, or commercial giants.

Because here’s the truth: women were never meant to be the stage managers of a global performance. We were never meant to spend December exhausted, overextended, or bracing under the weight of expectation. That burden was manufactured — engineered slowly over centuries — and then handed to us as though it were “tradition.”

It wasn’t. It was marketing. And as always, women became the custodians of a narrative designed by men.

So let this be a reminder, especially to those with small children or those just beginning to create their own version of the holidays: you don’t have to replicate what you inherited. You don’t have to maintain the illusion. You don’t have to set yourself on fire to keep a tradition warm.

Wind it back. Return it to meaning. Build a version of celebration that reflects your values, not the commercial machine’s.

Because the most radical thing a woman can do at Christmas is refuse to perform it — and reclaim it, slowly, intentionally, and entirely on her own terms.