Oh, the holiday season! It's magical! Or, at least that's what I remember from my childhood. The lights, the gifts, the food, the memories… When you're a kid all of those things are just there for you. You don't think about how that magic came to be.

And then you become a parent and it's your turn to create the magic and you realize, "Shit! This is a lot of work!"

And who is the one typically making all of this magic happen? You guessed it. That wonderful little holiday elf named Mom. (If your family breaks the mold here, please excuse my sassiness and assumptions. Insert “main caregiver” here or if you have an equitable partnership, Hooray for you!)

I'm a huge advocate for parenting equity year-round, but there's an extra special chill in the air when it comes to the holidays. Not only are you doing all the things you are always doing on a daily basis - work, childcare, house care, etc. - but you're also planning family get-togethers, cooking meals, buying gifts, attending school events, navigating school breaks, and creating magic. This feeling can start as early as September in our family with Rosh Hashanah, moves into October for Halloween, and into November and December. That's four solid months of extra things to think about, plan for, and execute on.

It's no wonder that for moms the holidays can feel like an extra full-time job. And that leads to burnout, exhaustion, and resentment. Even though we may love seeing the look on our littles' faces, it's a large, mostly invisible, burden to carry.

Let's all agree to stop the madness! Let's share a more equitable load this holiday season so we can all enjoy and partake in the magic. Wondering how? Try your hand at the five steps below.

1. Invite your partner to a conversation about the upcoming holiday season. Use language like "We have the holidays coming up." and "Let's chat about how we're going to create awesome family memories this year." You are a team. Game plan together. In our house, we reserve Sunday nights for these types of conversations. Typically it's focused on the week ahead, but you can guarantee that the deeper into the holiday season we get, the more these conversations will be focused on all the extras. Make this a really intentional and focused conversation.

2. Listen as much as you talk. If you want a partner to share the load, you need to get curious about what your partner wants the holidays to look like. Encourage more than, "I don't know. Whatever you want." Make this something exciting for both of you. What memories would your partner like to create? Actually listen and value what they say.

3. Divide, conquer, and play to your strengths. I love my husband, but making Thanksgiving dinner just isn't in his repertoire and I really enjoy it. So that means I cover the holiday cooking, but you better believe he's on kid duty while I'm in the kitchen. Get really tactical in these discussions. Who's responsible for buying gifts for whom? (Hint - you should not be buying a gift for your mother-in-law unless it's actually from YOU.) Are you traveling? Who's organizing logistics and packing? Elf on a shelf? Mensch on a bench? Need lots of candles? Who's organizing, researching, and executing? What days will each of you take off to cover school/daycare closures? These are all tasks to be shared equitably.

4. Trust your partner. Get really clear on what it looks like to take ownership of something. And then, let them do it without micromanaging. If your partner is in charge of stocking stuffers and it's not exactly what you would do, that's okay. If you really don't feel you can trust your partner to take care of what they commit to doing, I'd argue you have a bigger conversation on the horizon.

5. Be okay with letting things go. These are the memories your family will cherish forever, so it can seem really hard to accept anything less than everything, but I urge you - at what cost? Maybe it's okay if you don't send holiday cards this year. Maybe everyone only gets one gift or you don't wait in line for 4-hours to see Santa. What's important is that everyone, yourself included, feels like they were able to enjoy the season without stressing themselves out to make it happen.

And lest you think I've got this all perfectly figured out, I don't. I over-commit and spend too much time planning and not enough time delegating, but I'm working on it. Because I also value my kids appreciating everything that it takes to make these moments special. I value my partner’s appreciation of how much it takes to make these moments special. If I take it all on my shoulders, then I'm taking that away from them.

We're in this family together. We can make magic together. It benefits all of us.