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Guest Essay

By Elizabeth Austin

Ms. Austin hosted her family’s Christmas dinner from 2003 to 2023.

At first, I loved hosting. There was the alchemy of fine-tuning a grocery list, taking it from chaotic scribbles to neat abundance. I brined turkeys in coolers in my bathtub, timed side dishes in mental spreadsheets that would make a project manager weep and once made a standing rib roast in a toaster oven so small I had to prop the door closed with a wooden spoon. But each year, the gap between expectations and my capacity to meet them widened.

The goal was a table groaning with food, family gathered in gratitude, hostess serene and dutiful. The reality was me sweating through my dress, snapping at my children for underfoot crimes and performing domestic theater in a kitchen the size of a phone booth. I spent years dreaming of giving it all up, but figuring out how, when the role of holiday host had calcified around me like plaster, seemed impossible.

My family,........

© The New York Times