This is what a women-only Christmas looks like

I intend to wake up on December 25th, climb into some box-fresh luxurious pyjamas, and spend the morning in bed listening to Mariah Carey while drinking champagne. Then, at my leisure, I’m going to dress my chocolate labrador puppy in a big silky red ribbon and myself in all the sequins and velvet I can find, topped with all my best costume jewellery and gold-chandelier earrings. I will then go to meet four girlfriends for an ice-cold wild swim, followed by a cocktail-fuelled lunch, after which we will all head back to mine to spend the evening drinking Baileys, playing Taylor Swift, and singing karaoke in my cottage.

A women-only Christmas means being totally free to do, and behave, exactly as we want. We can cover ourselves in too much perfume without having to hear complaints about the stench; we can go out for lunch and come home and slob out on the sofa with a selection box and not worry about making Christmas night “tea”. We can dress how we want – without fretting if we look fat after lunch. And among female Christmas comrades-in-arms, it’s also no big deal if any of us decides to slink off to spend the evening by ourselves and take a three-hour bath in the candlelight if we want to.

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For me, a single, childless woman who is estranged from her parents, this kind of spoiled Christmas won’t be so very different from how I usually get to live. For some of those joining me on the 25th, one of whose children will be going to their dad and another whose daughter is coming with her, it’ll be a rare treat to be selfish during the holidays when they are usually manically spending their time hosting and serving.

Because, let’s face it, women are the people who’ve always held Christmas together. We owe everything we know about Christmas cooking to women: Fanny Cradock, Delia Smith and Nigella, who have coached us through roasting potatoes, building trifles, baking mince pies and making Christmas cakes.

It is typical that a man, Santa, takes all the glory for Christmas when everyone knows it is Mrs Claus doing all the unglamorous tasks behind the scenes. At Christmas, it is mostly women who are basting turkeys, hanging tinsel, buying presents, remembering the date for each child’s nativity play, and negotiating with their mother-in-law about what to eat at precisely what time.

Traditionally, it was the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters who spent the whole of Christmas day cooking together while the men trotted off down the pub and then staggered back later three sheets to the wind before settling down for lunch. And the work starts long, long before Christmas Day even breaks its dawn with women typically taking on the family social work – liaising with everybody to work out plans on WhatsApp groups about who will buy, bring, and cook what as well as panto plans, booking the restaurant for Boxing Day, organising presents for teachers, and bagging a Sainsbury’s delivery slot.

And that’s all on top of the mundane Christmas chores of finding clean sheets to make up spare beds, stocking up on Sellotape, finding the wrapping paper, vacuuming up glitter, mopping up sick, serving snacks, getting drinks in with their neighbours all the while keeping their lipstick and hair looking perfect. Meanwhile, men swoop in to claim victory for the heroic centrepieces: like carrying the Christmas tree home or cutting the meat and biting chunks out of the mince pie and carrots left out for Santa.

If you have got this far and are already shouting, “but, but, but,” at my wild generalisations, maybe breathe for a moment and cast your eyes across the seasonal statistics. A recent YouGov poll found that 61 per cent of women who lived with a male partner said they were responsible for buying the Christmas presents – compared to 8 per cent of men; 69 per cent of women say that they send out the Christmas cards, and 54 per cent of women said they did the food shopping, with only 17 per cent of men saying they were responsible for the cooking.

By contrast, on Christmas Day itself, 39 per cent of men said they got drunk and fell asleep, compared to only 14 and 13 per cent of women respectively.

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Perhaps once this dynamic made sense; when men were the main breadwinners, maybe they could argue they had earned the right to relax during the holidays. But now, women in different-sex relationships are out winning bread too and still expected to make the bread sauce when they get in.

And women don’t just take on the physical exhaustion of Christmas but the emotional labour too: rictus grinning at relatives, trying to keep the peace between everyone, keeping children entertained, granny in sherry, saying nothing when our mother-in-law mentions we’ve put on weight. It seems to me, the only woman really having fun at Christmas is Mariah Carey, who I like to think spends the day in velour drinking champagne surrounded by half-naked men, raking in around $2.5m from her Christmas hit every year.

Perhaps it’s time we copied Ireland’s celebration – where 6 January is known as “Women’s Christmas”, Nollaig na mBan, a day when men traditionally took on all the housework to thank women and recognise how much they have to do during the festive season. Although I’d much rather just see things change. And from my Christmas gathering this year, the hints are that they are changing, albeit slowly. The friend who I am spending the day with sheepishly admits to being delighted that for the first time, her children are going to their dad. “It’s so exhausting having to look after everyone all the time – my Christmas treat will be having a day off.”