The Undomestic Goddess Guide to Successful Holiday Entertaining

Subtitle: "Half-Birthdays and Homicidal Thoughts"


One of the trickiest bits of being a stay-at-home-mom, trophy wife sort is the lack of feedback. There are no job evaluations like there were back in my pre-retirement days; short of your kid ending up in juvi or Julliard, there aren't too many external markers to give you a sense of how well you're doing running your roost.

Someone went & had a half-birthday while I was busy paying attention to Christmas. How are we at 18 months already, how???

It may be shallow, but I'm enough of a Type A Minus retired lawyer type to miss that feeling of gold-star accomplishment. Therefore, I'm returning from my holiday hiatus to bring you my *highly scientific*, three-step guide to knowing your first time doing the holiday hosting - or mine, at any rate - was (I think?) (I hope?) a success:

With thanks to the lovely & talented Lulu McGee, from whom Santa bought this precious tee.

Step 1: Accept help from your guests


Hailing from a tribe of introverts as I do, I didn't grow up with much in-home entertaining. Somehow I'd picked up the idea that a host/hostess was obligated to cook ALL of the food while keeping an immaculately clean house, providing wildly witty repartee, looking like a "Vogue" ad, and keeping an eye on the wee CEO.

(Yeah, I have no idea where that came from either.)

Here's what actually happened: the grandparents kept an eye on Master P while I shuffled around in my (most stylish/clean!) flannel PJs, stressing about the apple pie; everyone involved magically appeared with a side dish or dessert and kindly encouraged me to breathe already. The pie and I both survived - as did everyone who ate the former, to my great surprise.

Step 2: Limit thoughts of familial homicide to less than five

The face of innocence, after yet another hit on the toddler nativity set.

I can count the number of murder plots I may have hatched towards Anonymous Relatives on one hand. One hand, after four days, five house guests, and at least six passive-aggressive swipes about the state of my kitchen! Feel free to let the Nobel Peace Prize committee know where to find me.

Step 3: Beg, borrow, or steal some kids if you can

At the risk of sounding insufferably Smug Mummy - though of course this applies if you have a niece or nephew, dog, cat, or secret love child-type handy - Christmas is just a whole 'nuther level of enjoyable with littles around. It just is. I want to find a sarcastic remark here to cut the sugar level of that statement, but . . . but . . . I can't. It's just better.

With the last of our house guests just having left today, I'm signing off now to sit very still. That is, until tomorrow, when someone - ahem, Anonymous Husband - thought it would be a good idea to invite friends over for dinner. And then there's New Year's Eve, which we're hosting too.

Excuse me while I go cry in the leftover mashed potatoes.