When Mom Was the One Who Made Christmas: Who Carries It Now

It's the second week of December, and nobody has said a word about the ham. The group text has gone quiet. Every year of your life, this was about the time your mother called to tell you when to come and what to bring, and it has only now hit you that the phone isn't going to ring. Christmas never just happened. She made it happen, and you're not sure anyone else knows how.

My own mother is still living, so I can't claim to know this Christmas firsthand. I have six children of my own, though, and I've seen how much of a family's December can live in one woman's head: who needs what, who isn't speaking to whom, which grandchild won't touch the cranberries. I kept wondering what happens to all of that when she's gone, and I couldn't find much written for you.

So this is for the sons and daughters, the grandchildren, and the husband left in a quiet kitchen. It's also for anyone who lost the person who held the holiday together, whether that was a dad, a grandmother, an aunt, a foster mother or the neighbor who took you in every year. Wherever I've written "Mom," please use the name that fits. We'll look at the work she did that nobody saw, who carries it now, her recipes and her things, the house, your brothers and sisters, and what you're allowed to let go.

If this is your first Christmas without someone, our guide to Christmas after a loss covers the ornaments, the stocking and the cards. This page stays with one question: what happens to a family's Christmas when the person who made it is gone?

Jump to: What she was doing · The work nobody saw · Who carries it · Her recipes · Her jars and freezer · Her things · The house, and Dad · Brothers and sisters · What to let go · Your own children · If she's still here · Every kind of mother

What She Was Really Doing All Those Years

There's a word for it, and I wish more families knew it. In 1985, sociologist Carolyn Rosenthal gave the name kinkeeping to the work of keeping a family connected. It's the calls, the reminders, the news passed from one house to the next, the planning of every gathering. When communication researchers first studied kinkeepers in the 1990s, 85 percent were women, mostly mothers, aunts and grandmothers.

Most of us never notice this work until it stops. It may be why this grief feels bigger than you expected. You lost your mother, and you may also have lost the way your family stayed a family. Those are two losses, and the second one deserves your tears too.

The Work Nobody Saw

Before anyone can decide who does what, it helps to see what there was. Sit down with someone who knew her ways, a sister, her best friend, your dad, and write it all out. Most families are surprised by how long the list gets.

She kept the card list, in a worn address book or in her head. She knew everybody's sizes and what they got last year. She knew which uncle can't have nuts. She ordered the ham by a certain date, from a certain butcher. She called the aunt who would otherwise spend the day alone, and she remembered the widower down the street. She tucked a little money into the card of the grandchild who was short that year. She took the picture. She knew who couldn't be seated beside whom, and she stepped in before an argument could start.

You'll find things on that list no one can do. That's all right. Finding them is part of honoring what she did, and some may simply end with her.

Who Carries It Now

Left alone, this work tends to slide onto one person, usually a woman, often without anyone ever asking her. Researcher Dawn Braithwaite points out that kinkeepers are often already juggling jobs, children and caregiving, that the role can eat into their time with friends, and that families need to think about looking after the person doing it. So please don't let it just happen. Hand it out on purpose.

Give each job to a person. One takes the card list. One calls the older relatives. A teenager runs the family photos. Sons and sons-in-law can make phone calls and order a ham as well as anyone.

Ask, don't assign. "Would you be willing to take the card list, just for this year?" makes a yes easier, and a no easier to hear.

Decide for one year at a time. Nobody is signing up for life. Next December you can trade jobs or drop one.

If it's all landing on you, you're allowed to say so out loud. "I can do the dinner. I can't do the dinner, the gifts and the phone calls." You lost her too. Nobody appointed you the new Mom.

And if you want it, if making Christmas is how you stay close to her, then let it be yours, and let the family thank you for it.

Her Recipes, and What the Card Leaves Out

You may have her recipe box. You may have a card that says "bake till done." So much of what she knew was never written down, because it lived in her hands.

Take care of the card itself. A former chief of the National Archives conservation lab has simple advice for family recipes: don't add new folds, store them flat, use clear polyester sleeves while you cook, and stay away from those old self-stick "magnetic" albums, which discolor paper. Scan the cards too, so that everyone can have her handwriting and the original can rest somewhere safe. The stains stay. They're the part that shows how much she used it.

Ask the person who stood next to her, soon. Her sister, her neighbor, the friend from church. Ask what the dough felt like, which pan she used, what she did that she never wrote down. Better yet, cook together and film their hands. Those memories belong to people who are getting older too.

Expect it to take a few tries. The Smithsonian Center for Folklife tells of a Texas family whose grandmother, the matriarch of their Christmas tamale day, left them nothing but a list of ingredients. They got it right by trial and error, with the people who remembered her ways and in-laws who brought new ideas. They also changed the part that would have worn one person out: a different family hosts each year, and each one does its share of the work at home before coming. They kept her table and her laughter, and let the rest change.

There's a page for copying down a recipe in our Thanksgiving printable, and the questions for her kitchen helpers are in Who Carries What, above.

The Last of What She Made

This one catches people off guard. You open her freezer and find a bag of cookies with her writing on the tape. You find the last jar of her jam on the shelf. It can be hard to eat it, and just as hard to throw it out.

Her freezer. The USDA says that food kept constantly at 0°F stays safe, and only the quality suffers. So if the freezer stayed on and the food stayed frozen, you may be able to share those last tamales or that last pie at Christmas, freezer burn and all. If the freezer lost power or the food thawed, it's safer to let it go. Either way, save the tape with her handwriting.

Her jars. These need more care, and I'm sorry to say it. The USDA recommends using home-canned food within a year, and the CDC says not to eat it if you don't know whether safe canning guidelines were followed, and never to taste it to check. Food can carry botulism and still look fine. So her jar may be something to keep and look at rather than eat, or a label to save with the jar emptied. Please don't serve it to the family, however much it would mean. Her love is in that jar whether anyone eats it or not.

If you want to keep making her pickles or her relish, extension food safety experts say many older family canning recipes aren't safe by today's standards. You can still make hers fresh or freeze it. If you want it on the shelf, look for a tested recipe close to hers at the National Center for Home Food Preservation, or ask your county extension office.

Her Things

The ornaments she bought on trips. The stockings she made. The good dishes that only came out once a year. Extension specialists who have studied this for decades say that things like these often cause more trouble than the house or the money. Their well-known guide is called "Who Gets Grandma's Yellow Pie Plate?" and I love it for that title alone. A pie plate has almost no price, and two sisters can both feel it was promised to them.

Here's the part that matters this December: agree on how you'll decide before anyone picks anything, and make sure each person gets heard. A will, or a signed list kept with it, may already say who gets what, so check with the person settling the estate before anything leaves the house. There's more about sorting a parent's home in When Your Mom or Dad Dies, and the printable above has a place to write down what you agree.

The ornaments can go around. Lay them out, photograph them all, and let the children and grandchildren each choose a few. No one has to keep the whole box, and no one has to be the one who gave it away.

The stocking she never finished. If she made one for every grandchild, there may be a baby who won't get hers. A friend from her church or a local needlework group might finish a half-done one or make the next. Or a store-bought one can carry her name on the tag: "Grandma would have made you one."

When the House Is Gone, or Dad Is Still in It

If the house has been sold, Christmas may have lost its address. Nobody has to become the new one. Families take turns, or rent a church hall, or meet at a restaurant, or give up the 25th and gather on a Saturday in January when the drive is easier. The first year in a new place may feel wrong. The people are what you were going there for.

If Dad or her partner is still living, ask before you take over. They may want every decoration up just the way she left it, or they may not want to see one. Please don't assume they can't manage, either. When a researcher in Denmark interviewed widows and widowers in their late 60s to 80s, how people handled meals afterward came down more to how the couple had shared the work than to being a man or a woman. Some dads make a better ham than anyone knew.

What may be missing is the phone. Researchers have long noted that wives often keep up the family ties during a marriage, so a widowed man can find things have gone very quiet. Put a standing call on the calendar. Bring the grandchildren by in the weeks before, not just on the day. You might pass along What No One Tells You About Being a Widow (or Widower).

Your Brothers and Sisters

Grief expert Kenneth Doka has written about his own family after his mother died. They lost their center, he says. As each sibling's own family grew, they began making separate plans for the holidays. So they started a yearly family reunion, and years later it was still bringing the generations together.

Research backs up what he saw. A large Dutch study followed adults over more than a decade and found that brothers and sisters were in closer contact after a parent died, but that once both parents were gone, the ties tended to fade over the long run. Knowing that ahead of time is a gift. A family that drifts usually isn't a family that stopped caring. It may just be a family that lost the person who dialed the phone.

Choose one thing to protect. You may not keep every Christmas together. You can pick one gathering a year, at any time of year, and guard it. A week at the lake in July counts.

Keep inviting. Some people stay away because the room without her is too hard. Leave the door open without keeping score.

Know what she was holding down. Keeping the peace may have been one of her jobs, and it's the hardest one to hand on. Doka describes a woman who believed her family had no real conflict, until she admitted that her mother had simply stopped every argument. Once she was gone, it all broke loose. If Christmas has turned into a battle, it may be older than this year, and it isn't your fault. A family counselor can help, and if the others won't go, it can still help to go alone.

If you're the only one, an only child or the last sibling left, every job on that list may land on you, with nobody who remembers the same Christmases. Cross off most of it. Keep the calls that matter, and tell your own children the stories. They're the ones who will carry them.

What You Get to Let Go

Our holiday guide has three gentle questions for deciding what to keep. Here's the one I'd add when she was the one who made it all: was this for us, or was it for her?

Some traditions were the heart of the family. Others she may have done because her mother did, and she may have been as tired of the fruitcake as everyone else. Ask around. You may learn that nobody actually liked it.

Trying to do it all exactly as she did can turn into a kind of test you can't pass. It was never going to be hers, and that's fine. Pick the one or two things the family would truly miss, and let those be enough this year. A tradition you set down isn't lost. You'll know where you left it, and someone may pick it up in ten years and surprise you all.

When You're Making Christmas for Your Own Children

Few places are harder to stand. You want your mother, and your children want Christmas. They may also be missing the grandmother who did it best.

Let them in on it. "Grandma always made these. Ours may come out lumpy, and we're going to laugh about it." Give them one of her jobs: setting out her nativity, stirring the batter, reading the card she always read. Then let them see you cry a little over the flour. It tells them that missing someone is allowed in your house. A child who learns her job now is how it keeps going. Our post on when a child loses a grandparent has more.

If She's Still Here

You may be reading this with your mother in hospice, or slipping away a little more each year, knowing this may be her last Christmas in charge. There's still time for something precious.

Ask her to teach you. Let her sit in a kitchen chair and boss you through the stuffing, while someone quietly records it. She may love being asked. Our Time Together post has more gentle things to do with the time you have, and Save Their Voice can help you keep the sound of her.

Ask about her things, gently. The pie plate guide suggests "what if" questions: "If you weren't able to decide someday, what would you want to happen with your ornaments?" If she'd rather not, leave it there. You can't make her.

If dementia has already taken the recipes, her sister or her oldest friend may still have them. Our post Grieving While They're Still Here is for this long goodbye.

And if you're the one who makes Christmas, I hope you'll write some of it down, for the people who will someday stand in the store and wonder about the ham. That's part of why I wrote Everything They'll Need to Know.

Every Kind of Mother, Every Kind of Christmas

If she didn't make it warm. Not every mother made Christmas a comfort. Some made it tense, or perfect for the neighbors while you walked on eggshells. You may have been the one who did the work while she took the credit. If so, you already know everything on that list, and you get to decide what stops with her. Relief is allowed, and so is grief for the Christmases you never had. This post on complicated relationships is for you.

If she wasn't your mother on paper. A stepmother, a grandmother who raised you, a foster mom, your other mom, the woman whose table you were always welcome at. If nobody else sees how much you lost, please read When Your Grief Isn't Recognized.

If it was your mother-in-law. Married-in sons and daughters often did half the driving and dishes, and may lose a whole side of the family with her. If there's been a divorce, she may have been the one who still set a place for you. Call the cousins anyway. Someone has to go first.

If she was the keeper of your culture. In some families, only she knew the prayers, the foods and the words in the old language. A tamale day, Nochebuena, a Polish Christmas Eve table with one empty place set, which can also stand for those who have passed on. The same goes for Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Eid, Diwali or Lunar New Year, if that's the day she made. Ask the elders who are still here, and record them in their own language while you can.

If faith was hers and not yours. She may have been the one who got everyone to Mass, said the blessing or set out the nativity. Someone may still need a ride to the service she never missed. You don't have to believe what she believed to carry any of that. And if no one does, she's no less your mother.

If someone at home depended on her. A disabled brother or sister who lived with Mom may feel every change at Christmas more than anyone. Tell them early and plainly what will be the same and what won't, and let them keep one of her jobs. If she was the one who signed for a Deaf relative at the table, or who sat with the one overwhelmed by the noise, name who will do that now.

If she was the one watching out at Christmas. Maybe she kept the drinks off the table, or sat up with someone on Christmas Eve, or always knew who was struggling. That job was never on any list, and it may matter most. Talk about who takes it, and make a plan before the day. SAMHSA's National Helpline is free, private and open every day at 1-800-662-4357, in English and Spanish.

If she was paying for it. Many mothers quietly covered the dinner, the gifts and somebody's bus fare. Without her, the money may simply not be there. Say so early, so one person doesn't quietly take on the whole bill. A potluck is still Christmas, and our Christmas guide has places to turn when money is tight.

If you're far away, or will be alone. She may have been your whole tie to the family. Ask one person to take over her calls to you, and set a time to cook her dish in two kitchens with the phone propped on the counter. If there's no one left to call, Grieving Alone is here for you.

What Can Wait

Who takes the good dishes. Who hosts next year. What happens to the house. Sorting the recipe box, finishing the stocking, deciding once and for all about the fruitcake. Nobody needs to become the new head of the family by December 25. This year, it's enough if someone orders a ham, or a pizza, and the people who loved her end up in one room or on one phone call.

You Don't Have to Be Her

Nobody can be. Your Christmas will be lumpier than hers, and later, and somebody will forget the rolls. That's all right. She didn't start out knowing how to do this either. Someone taught her, or she figured it out one burned batch at a time.

What she made was never really the ham. It was the feeling that somebody was keeping track of all of you. You can each keep a little of that now. Make the call. Send the picture. Set out the plate. It doesn't have to be done well. It only has to be done with love, and that part, you learned from her.

More Help

• Christmas After a Loss: Getting Through the First One Without Them
• The First Holidays After a Loss
• Thanksgiving After a Loss: The Empty Chair at the Table
• When Your Mom or Dad Dies: A Grief Guide for Adult Children
• When Your Brother or Sister Dies
• Poems for a Mother's Funeral Program

Please note: This is general information, not medical, legal or food safety advice for your exact situation. Rules about estates vary by state, so ask the person settling the estate or an attorney. For questions about home-canned food, ask your county extension office. If grief feels like too much, your doctor or a grief counselor can help.

With care,
C. Lindorfer, Noted & Charmed