The Forgotten Dignity of Being The Lady of the House

There is true joy in being a “real good housekeeper.”

“Well, Rachel, you’re a real good housekeeper.”

The compliment came from my husband’s grandma — a sweet but no-frills daughter of the Midwest who will never see the other side of 90 again. It was a compliment from another time. She was either unaware of the archaic nature of her comment, or did not care. (I would love her for either one.)

We had Christmas at our house this year. It was the first Christmas that I have played hostess for. When we go to my in-laws for Christmas, I try to pitch in and help, but it always falls to my mother-in-law to stay up until 2 in the morning, wrapping this and cleaning that and making pies in absurd numbers. Before I married into this family, I watched my mom do the exact same thing. I think it’s the same everywhere. Christmas is to moms what April is to accountants. This is where it’s all got to come together. Clean sheets for guests. Gift shopping. Gift wrapping. Buying food. Cooking food. Putting away food. Getting out food. Putting it away again. Making the house not just clean, but also festive, jolly, and freaking adorable in crevice and corner. Christmas traditions to continue or begin. It may or may not involve playing four consecutive games of Settlers of Catan to keep you awake until 3 a.m. waiting for the turkey — which you shouldn’t have bought, but “it was on sale” — to finish cooking. All this and more.

So to me, bleary-eyed and arms deep into last night’s dishes, Grandma’s compliment was a sweet reward. Grandma was a real good housekeeper in her day, too. Her cleaning standards are the stuff of legend. Even my mother-in-law, who is also a Real Good Housekeeper, still quakes when she comes into Grandma’s kitchen (the Holy of Holies of any housekeeper’s domain), afraid to disturb the cleanliness and order therein. I had the good fortune to be around the last year that she hosted her annual Christmas Eve breakfast. You haven’t feasted until you’ve feasted at Grandma’s house on Christmas Eve morning. Grandma’s feast-throwing days are over now. Even her signature Christmas rolls, which she fiercely continued to bring to Christmas dinner up until this very year, have fallen by the wayside, thanks to a bad fall earlier in the year.

But she knows. She knows that meals do not magically appear out of thin air. She knows that houses are not born clean. She knows that refrigerators do not fill themselves with groceries. She knows the million and one things to plan and remember and wring your hands over when you forget. She knows all the rigors of being the Lady of the House (another quaint term that I am rather fond of) at Christmas time.

A lot has changed since Grandma was a young woman like me. Probably most of her peers were mothers and housekeepers — “homemaker” was the trendy word for this in her day. Nowadays for a woman to be a homemaker, and a homemaker only, is a bit of an anomaly. Women can, for the most part, be whatever they want to be. We give women their due praise for excelling in the arts, the sciences, sports, and in the business world. This is appropriate. A job well done always merits praise. But the sad part is that we are leaving behind all the generations of hardworking women before us who excelled at what they did. We are also leaving out those of the younger generation who have said “no thanks” to the opportunities that our current world presents to women and chosen to continue in the tradition of their grandmothers and great-grandmothers — dedicating themselves full-time to making their living spaces into homes.

Proverbs 31:31 says:

Honor her for all that her hands have done,
and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.

This year, if you have treasured Christmas memories of gifts and pie and feasts and a beautifully decorated home, find a Real Good Housekeeper, and instead of making “Susy Homemaker” jokes — thank them.

Editor’s note: Rachel updated this post from last year. This year, she is still hosting family for the holidays, and still sounds like a “real good housekeeper,” but this time for the prep work in November and Thanksgiving. Her mother and husband will take her work forward for Christmas as currently we are all checking her Facebook feed for news of her second daughter’s arrival. Anytime now.