A teenager’s revelation about Christmas has revealed a depressing trend that only affects women during the festive season.
A rite of passage of growing up is realizing how much work your mom does during the silly season that goes unrecognized when you’re a child.
Sometimes, that lesson can be learned when you realize how little gets done for your mom in return.
A TikTok has amassed millions of views, featuring a fourteen-year-old sharing they’d just discovered that their mom had to buy her presents to open on Christmas Day.
“Just realized my mom fills her own stocking on Christmas Eve. I didn’t believe that like Santa does, but I believed in my father,” the teen explained.
The teen added that he was horrified to discover this wasn’t something his dad was doing for his mom at Christmas.
“For the longest time, I thought my dad would care enough to do that simple thing for her, but he can’t. She does it all on her own,” he explained.
The TikTok could be dismissed as a one-off or a unique situation, but the comments in response to the teen’s revelation expose it as a much broader issue.
The issue is so rife that someone replied to the TikTok video and said they just “assumed” most moms filled up their stockings at Christmas time.
The creator wrote back and said he wrongly “figured” his dad would fill his mom’s stocking because she always filled his.
The comment section quickly turned into people sharing how their moms in their family often had to buy for themselves.
One mom commented that she always bought and wrapped her presents, and her child only realized when she was hospitalized one year so that she couldn’t do it.
Another shared she’d been married for 25 years, and her husband doesn’t get her “anything” on any occasion, including Christmas, Birthdays, and Mother’s Day.
Someone else wrote that while their mom was always in charge of filling everyone else’s stockings in the family, hers was always “empty.”
“I started to fill it now, since no else in the family does. She deserves the world,” she admitted.
One wife shared that after over a decade of marriage, she now just pretended she didn’t want anything for Christmas but admitted that it made her “sad” that no one bothered to buy her anything.
One child revealed that last year, her mom gave her the gifts she’d bought for herself and asked her daughter to wrap them and write they were from her husband.
“I wanted to cry after that,” she admitted.
Another shared that after years of her mom filling her dad’s stocking and getting nothing in return, she’d stopped doing that.
Similarly, someone else wrote that their mom always buys and wraps her gifts because, after 20 years of marriage, their dad still claims he “never knows” what to buy her.
One mom said her daughters were only four and five when they noticed their dad didn’t buy their mom Christmas gifts.
“I didn’t do anything for myself once, so there was nothing. My daughters realized before we got up and made me a Santa present,” one wrote.
Similarly, creator Eve shared on TikTok last year that her boyfriend of five years “forgot” to get her a Christmas gift.
She said that after he forgot her Christmas present, he asked her to check the glove department in his car.
She thought a gift would be hidden there … but she was wrong.
He just needed her to grab his wallet that was in there.
This issue has become such a thing that a married woman who was “forgotten” by her husband on Christmas Day has also gone viral.
Aubree Jones shared a “PSA for husbands everywhere” after Josh, her husband of 12 years, captured the moment she realized he hadn’t bought her a gift for the 10th year in a row.
The clip shows the Jones family home filled with presents for the kids, Josh, and even the dog, while poor Aubree’s stocking lies empty and unloved on a chair.
“Why’s it empty?” Josh can be heard asking, after noting everyone else’s were stuffed to the brim.
“Santa didn’t come for me,” Aubree, who is sat on a couch in her PJs, responds solemnly.
The video quickly amassed millions of views, as women resonated with the familiar turn of events, proving too many men are guilty of forgetting their wives and partners during the holidays.
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