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Ugh, this year…
- 22 December, 2025
- Emily Kimelman
I am really struggling to ignore the patriarchal capitalist ruse that is Christmas.
Who actually makes Christmas happen?
The planning. The lists. The noticing that your nephew is obsessed with dinosaurs this year and remembering your mother-in-law can't eat gluten.
The coordinating of schedules, the wrapping, the cooking, the decorating, the magic making.
Women. Mostly women.
Sure, men often finance Christmas, and a lot of Dads are fully engaged—but most women also work, and the labor still falls disproportionately on us.
Besides, financial contribution in the form of a job happens year-round. It's not seasonal unpaid labor performed in a frantic six-week sprint while also doing everything else—including costumes for the school pageant about the son of that other old white man with a beard who's always watching.
So women do the work, and who gets the thank-you cookies? Who gets the song lyrics? Who do the kids write letters to?
Some old white man who "sees you when you're sleeping" and "knows when you're awake." Who will put coal in your stocking if you're bad.
We've spent a century teaching children that it's totally normal—magical, even—to be watched by an all-knowing man who judges your behavior, rewards compliance, and punishes dissent.
I'm struggling to ignore it more this year because I just finished my 19th Sydney Rye Mystery, Feral Vengeance, which, in part, explores the dangers of AI when it comes to surveillance.
We are facing a terrifying future. In fact, we're already half living in it. Part of what DOGE did—besides the dismantling of USAID, which will probably go down as one of the deadliest decisions in human history—was contract with Palantir, a data company, to consolidate Americans' data.
Palantir is the same company that helped El Salvadoran dictator Nayib Bukele use surveillance to lock up 2% of his population.
The CEO of Palantir, Alex Karp, said: "I love the idea of getting a drone and having light fentanyl-laced urine spraying on analysts that tried to screw us."
That's obviously worse than coal, but…always watching. Punishing those who don't comply. Just not a great thing to consider magical.
Look. I love Christmas. I loved Santa. I thought my grandfather was Santa—white beard, sparkling eyes, big belly. I'm not trying to ruin the magic.
But can't we have magic without an old white man watching our every move and judging our value?
What am I teaching my children? What programming am I installing? Will it make them more accepting of living in a surveillance state?
Santa, in his current iteration, has only been around for about a century. Seems like we could shift this narrative. We can turn away from the normalizing of mass surveillance and giving credit to one man when it's women doing the work.
We can celebrate the darkness of winter, the coziness of family, and the domestic labor that is the real magic of the holiday season.
A heartfelt thank you to all the women doing the work this week. You deserve more credit than you get. Please try to take some time for yourself. Maybe, I don’t know, read a book with a nice cuppa tea or cocoa…or a cocktail. You deserve it, Queen.
Happy Holidays,
Emily
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