Thanksgiving is over, which means it is now officially the season formerly known as my favorite season.

I never thought I’d be the type to stray once the mystery and magic went out of things, but here I am. Christmas has always been my absolute favorite, and I can’t believe I’m about to say this … but I think I want a divorce.

I know. Blasphemy. I mean I made a commitment. I took vows. But after 30 years of continual, over-the-top, one-sided effort I want to start seeing other holidays.

This holiday just hits different four kids in. Do I love seeing the magic through their eyes? Absolutely, yes. But I see that magic for maybe a minute and a half when the tree is first lit up. Possibly another four Christmas Eve night when we turn on the Santa tracker. Maybe a total of ten on Christmas morning. The rest of the season, the look in their eyes is closer to this:

That is not magic in their eyes, that is more of an “I’m off my schedule and my meds and bouncing from one sugar-filled event to another for the next thirty days” glaze in their eyes.

And, bonus, this very kid and his three-equally zen siblings will be spending the holidays at the homes of relatives, where your parenting is under the microscope and the kids you’re parenting are only operating at about 30% to begin with.

It’s not the kid’s fault. It’s just that they’re at a stage of life where they’re being raised by You Tube and then they go to stay at a house where You Tube isn’t streaming constantly and they just miss their mommy. And they act out accordingly. And is there any way to prepare your relatives for the drunken mob that six cousins between the ages of 2 and 9 turns into? This same mob once spent all of four minutes unsupervised in a hotel room last summer while their shift manager was in the bathroom, and she walked out to this:

This is the kind of energy being unleashed into family homes everywhere, and your option is to either helicopter parent or to get blackout drunk at 2 in the afternoon and hope that nothing too valuable gets broken. And it’s always option B, because who has any extra energy to helicopter parent this time of year?

Any extra energy I have is going into keeping track of the kids holiday events (which I will show up for on the wrong day) and organizing teacher gifts (which I will forget to send) and procuring, wrapping and hiding gifts for one spouse, two pets, four kids, nine teachers and eighteen-hundred relatives while trying to stay within my regular budget for the month … and baking for all the things, and decorating, and then trying to keep the house extra clutter-free because the decorations are all the clutter I can handle and dealing with the fact that it’s also my busy time at work and all the while trying to keep the magic alive for the kids by remembering the elf and most of all, trying not to be so constantly over-stimulated that I turn into raging bitch mom who makes each kid cry at least twice a day.

All this to say, Christmas is just not my ideal holiday relationship, I don’t care how pretty it is. I remember once, in the throes of a very tumultuous relationship with an addict, thinking that I would marry a potato someday as long as he didn’t have a drinking problem. This is how I feel now about holidays. Give me an ugly, muddy, boring Presidents’ Day weekend. I’ll take it. I’ll love it forever and give it my all. Just as soon as my divorce is final.