The Mom Stocking Exchange: “Our Best Idea Ever”

It’s just a fact that creating Christmas “magic” falls largely on moms. We are typically the ones to decorate, bake, shop, wrap, ship, on top of our regular mom responsibilities that are plenty overwhelming without the extra pressure Christmas brings. This can be a really draining time of year to be a mom who wants to do even the most minimal things to facilitate a positive Christmas experience for her family. I know, because I’m pretty much a slacker mom when it comes to Christmas and I still feel it.

You work so hard to put this all together and then December 25th comes and there may be just a little bit of a letdown. I don’t know if your experience is like mine, but I fill every stocking except mine. So come Christmas morning, there are stockings full of fun waiting at the fireplace. . . and then there’s mine. It’s mostly flat. . . kind of like my mood by the end of all this.

Rebecca Tredway Photography

I don’t want to sound whiney and maybe this is just a first world problem, but I imagine there are plenty of mothers all across the globe that can identify with the feeling of working and sacrificing for their children and then fighting off feelings of disappointment when it seems unreciprocated. I can remember my mom putting some of the Christmas presents from her piano students under the tree so she’d have something to open while we were all opening our abundance, so I think women have been problem-solving this situation in ways big and small for years. I don’t blame my kids or my husband. They do a sweet job of making me feel loved at Christmas, but this stocking situation is just not on their radar.

Last year my good friend gave me a little gift for Christmas. I saved it to open when my kids were opening their stockings and it was such a little moment of joy and surprise in a morning when I knew (and had planned) just about everything that was going to happen. I called my friend later that day to thank her and proposed an idea: How about next year we exchange stockings? I’d give her my lonely, sad, flat stocking and she could fill it and bring it back to me before Christmas, and I’d do the same for her.

A couple days ago she dropped off the stocking for me, fuzzy and full of wrapped gifts. When she handed it to me she said, “This is our best idea ever.” I couldn’t agree more.

It was so much fun to shop for each other. We decided on a minimal budget and I think we both got everything from Target (so no high pressure to pick highly personalized gifts you have to order a month in advance). It was honestly the simplest shopping I did this year because I basically just walked around the store and picked out all the things that made me smile— the things you love, but you’d never pick for yourself.

The fun of getting that stocking ready and now knowing my stocking is already sitting on my dresser, ready to lay out on Christmas night has added a little injection of joy into what can be a pretty hectic and stressful time no matter how hard I work to keep my priorities straight. You might imagine my husband or kids would be offended by this solution, but I think it’s given them a little relief too. It’s one less thing on them to try and figure out.

I’m excited for Christmas morning to see how this all works out. I’m not sure if it will become a yearly tradition or just something we needed to do this year to get out of this Christmas funk. Either way, for this season of life when moms are the magic makers, I think this truly is our best idea ever— an idea that takes the expectations off our family, allows us to be generous to someone we love, and provides a surprise element of joy to the event we’re mostly responsible for planning.

I’d love to know how you handle your mom stocking! Do you not care when your stocking is empty? Does your spouse fill it for you? Do adults not have stockings in your house? I’d love to know if this MomFriend stocking sounds like something you’d like to try!