On Stocking Stuffers, Bids, and Love Languages
Men aren't filling their partner's stockings. In a world of big deals this seems like it isn't one. I submit that it is.
Quick disclaimer that this will be primarily about heterosexual couples who celebrate Christmas. Many of these themes carry over to any holiday and the spectrum of romantic relationships. I see you women who were in relationships with men for a long time and didn’t realize gift-giving can be a joy until you married a woman. I see you Jewish men who learned that stockings were important to their wives and have done a great job ever since. I see the handful of ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses gleefully discovering stocking culture for the first time. You all are cute.
Last year I made a startling discovery. I started seeing posts on social media about women in committed relationships waking up on Christmas morning to an empty stocking. “The most useless decoration,” one called it. I’m not talking about moms who don’t put one out because in their family they decided that stockings were just for kids. Nor the ones who, when they first got together with their partner there was a talk about stockings and a decision not to hang them. Nope. In these situations a stocking was hung with care with hopes that St. Nicholas (or his surrogate) soon would be there. Nobody was.
After seeing these posts I made my own that year on Tik Tok wherein I said that it was discouraging to hear this and gave some basic stocking stuffing tips. It became a modest success with twenty thousand views. There were 200 comments, many lamenting that the men in these women’s lives—some of whom were married for decades—never once filled their stockings. So this year I made a follow-up with more advice and it blew up. At the time of this writing it has been viewed 850,000 times. There are almost 5,000 comments and it’s been shared 6,000 times. I hit a nerve and for a lot of people, it hurt.
The absolute majority of these comments, representing thousands of women, confirms my suspicion: men in general aren’t filling stockings on Christmas Eve. And worse, many of them aren’t even giving gifts under the tree. Some women said that in decades of marriage they could count the gifts they received for any holiday or birthday on one hand. If ever.
Dudes. There is a lot going on in the world right now. It doesn’t matter if you read this today, or if you discover this on an ancient smartphone thousands of years from now and somehow decide to read it (hello cool alien archaeologists, I’m sorry we messed things up so bad but I hope you found some of our recipes and like them), there’s probably a lot going on right now for you too. And in spite of that, or maybe even because of that, we need to do better. Because this isn’t just about stockings.
Many pages of literature have been devoted to the unsung heroes that women in straight relationships are while making Christmas work. Especially when there are kids. I won’t list them all but there’s a great article about it here. In spite of leaps forward for gender equality, kin-keeping is still vastly considered women’s work. Throughout the year these includes things like tracking birthdays, sending cards, remembering when all the parties are, and reaching out to members of not just their own family but that of their husbands and boyfriends. This makes the winter holidays especially taxing. “For women who are already stretched thin during the holidays, as so many of these activities converge at once,” Dawn O. Braithwaite of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is quoted, “kinkeepers would likely be stretched even more.”
That’s not fair and if we’re going to make the lives of the women we ostensibly love easier, a big step would be reducing their holiday workload. So many of the women in my comments have grown to hate Christmas—a holiday they once loved—because of the work it entails, the expectations from their families that every year be magical, and maybe worst of all a complete lack of reciprocity vis-a-vis said holiday magic.
So when I brought up stocking stuffers, it unleashed a lot of pent-up frustration. The responses from the stocking-deprived could be sorted into a few categories:
The bitter, angry, or resigned
They’ve put out a stocking every year for nought. Some just ended up not putting theirs out at all. When kids arrived and learned about Christmas traditions, they wondered why Mom was the only one without, and these moms started filling their own just so the kids stopped asking awkward questions. Presumably there’s a father blithely sipping his coffee during this discussion, but perhaps he is too absorbed in yet another book about World War II to process it.
The jubilant exes
These are women who proudly referred to their thoughtless paramours in the past-tense. Some had replaced them with a considerate gift-giver upgrade, some happily filled their own. Some swapped stockings with a close friend, a sister, or filled their own with treats and little gifts. A handful of single mothers had taught their young sons to fill their stocking for them. Cycle-breaking heroes the lot of them.
The copers
These women made excuses for their men. Frankly I don’t have a lot of patience for this. “He mows the lawn, though.” OK? That’s once a week, not even all year if you live somewhere temperate. You probably do a million laundry loads in that time and still manage to remember birthdays. Next. “How is he supposed to know unless I tell him?” Can you imagine if that attitude carried over to the workplace? Nobody gets hired if they need to be given a list every single day of the tasks they need to do. Show some initiative. And worst of all, “gift-giving isn’t his love language.” Ma’am. I respectfully ask this questions: who cares?
I’ll admit to getting prickly at the concept of “love languages.” It’s bothered me for a long time and only recently did I discover that there’s no research supporting the concept. Just some guy made them up. Not a researcher or an expert, but a Baptist pastor who counseled couples. Let me be on the record that I don’t like the idea of religious leaders without any formal training giving therapist-adjacent advice. It’s setting everyone up for failure.
Not that the Love Language book is a failure, at least not financially. I don’t mind the idea at its core, I just disagree with any one person being easily sorted into one basket. Or that there’s just five said baskets. I especially don’t like the idea of a “primary love language.” But clearly it resonates. People have found usefulness in it and I don’t want to take that away from anyone.
What I would like to point out is that there’s too much emphasis on what someone’s giving love language is and not enough on the receiving end. It feels like the whole concept has been weaponized as an excuse.
A short play:
“When I grew up, my parents gave me a stocking every year. It was filled with treats, inexpensive gifts, a card, and there was always an orange in the toe. I’d love it if we could do that.”
“Oooh that sounds so nice but my love language is acts of service, unforch. So I’m going to mow the lawn which also just happens to bring me a lot of satisfaction but it’s for you I promise. Though later we can do my other one, physical touch, for a while.”
“Um OK right, and I appreciate that, but what I’m saying is that stockings were an important part of my holiday season and oh the mower is going you can’t hear me”
CURTAINS. Jeers from the audience. One woman faints. A man is escorted from the theater, apoplectic. “NOT ALL MEN,” he screams. He is unceremoniously deposited on the curb by burly security guards. “Not all men, no. But certainly you.”
Way more compelling to me than love languages is the Gottman Institute concept of relationship “bids.” Instead of sometimes broad big declarations of love that we see in movies, good relationships are built on thousands of small bids to one another and how they are reciprocated. According to researcher John Gottman, these can be responded to in three ways:
Turning towards (acknowledging the bid)
Turning away (ignoring or missing the bid)
Turning against (rejecting the bid in an argumentative or belligerent way)
Successful relationships can be predicted based on how many “turn towards” reactions there are compared to how many times the response is a “turn away” or especially “turn against.”
A common example of a bid is if one of you sees a new bird at the feeder and calls out to the other to come see. It seems like a minor thing, but the number of times when you’re busy or stressed and not particularly interested in the bird and either ignore or (heaven forbid) scoff at the bid, the more likely you are to erode the affection your partner has for you.
In either framing that’s what a stocking hung over the literal or digital fireplace represents. A bid for affection, or a receptacle for a love language deposit. And oh my gosh why can’t I talk about any of this without every third thing sounding like some kind of euphemism? Definitely there’s a better way to put that second one. Help me out.
Anyway sure this all sounds nice. But why the stocking, though? Why does it matter? There are lots of Christmas traditions, what makes this one special? I’m dying to tell you. It’s why I wrote this whole thing.
That’s where the stocking shines. The stakes are low and the payoffs can be great. Good gift-giving means seeing and knowing the person you care about.
Gift-giving is an art, and like all arts, it’s hard at first. It takes practice. It gets even more complicated in committed relationships with things like shared finances. If money is tight, even a dedicated gift-giver can mess up and spend family resources on a gift that falls flat. The stakes are a little higher if the opportunity cost of a miss is that there’s less money for food. Some of this pressure can be relieved by having separate accounts for fun money that can be spent without having to check in with one another, both on yourself and on each other. It makes it more meaningful if there’s a bit of personal sacrifice.
But either way I understand why someone would rather just buy themselves the thing they want, hand it to their sitcom-clueless husband, and say “wrap this.” In partnerships where there is a big under-the-tree present, it’s probably pretty normal to have a pretty good idea about what’s under there. Or at least that’s been narrowed down to be one of a handful of things on a curated online shopping wish list. Pulling off a successful surprise on a once-a-year gift is not for amateurs.
That’s where the stocking shines. The stakes are low and the payoffs can be great. Good gift-giving means seeing and knowing the person you care about. Filling a sock with little reminders say that you know who you married, enjoy her, and celebrate what she celebrates. Pins, stickers, and earrings of her favorite TV show or music artist say that you’ve been listening when she talks. Favorite treats say you know what she likes. And some refills of her favorite lipsticks and perfumes say you like how she looks and smells when you go somewhere nice. An orange in the toe just like her parents did for her says you recognize that tradition matters. And as opposed to the one time at-bat you get for a big gift under the tree if you miss on one thing, there’s a lot more chances to knock it out of the park.
Someone told me that stockings are silly. That they’re for kids. But so is all of Christmas. We bring trees into our houses. We eat too many sweets. We force small children to sit on an elderly stranger’s lap and laugh at them when they cry. We pretend to like peppermint. We listen to the same seven songs for a month and a half. We hang poisonous plants from the ceiling and try to make people kiss under it. In that context putting some Reese’s peanut butter cups in the shape of little conifers in a sock and saying “here, I love you” is pretty reasonable.
All I’m saying is give it a try. Even if you’ve never done it before. If your partner has given up on even putting one up it’s not too late. Dig it out and surprise them. Or get her a whole new one. It’s going to go well. She, he, they? They’ll cry. I’m so confident about this.