As a mom who has a tendency to get carried away with ideas for how my family should run, I force my kid and my husband to do a lot of things they probably don't want to do. While I'm sure my son would much prefer eating lollipops and ice cream for every meal, I try to get him to at least look at a vegetable once in a while [1]. I make everyone stop enjoying an activity so we can pose for family photos to remind us later of the fun we were having before I stopped everything (I swear they thank me later). But one thing I'm never going to do is force them to wear matching holiday pajamas [2].
If other people love dressing up their family, great. I have no problem with it. Sure, I think it's a little silly, but I'm sure things I do are silly and weird to other people. My reason for avoiding this trendy tradition is that I know for a fact that no one in my family would enjoy it, so why should I force it?
With the vegetables that I force my son to eat, he may not love that I'm practically cramming asparagus down his throat, but his body needs it. Having everyone wear matching pajamas serves no function other than to take uncomfortable and awkward family photos [4]. If it feels forced, it's because it is. Having grown up with websites and memes celebrating life's most awkward moments [5], there seems to be this knee-jerk reaction to pretend to wear ugly things for the sake of fun, like ugly Christmas sweaters. Twenty years ago, no one would be caught dead in them, but now you can't stumble into Target during the holidays without running into one. Matching pajamas are the same thing.
When you remove the sincerity of matching pajamas or ugly sweaters, it takes away the awkwardness and the supposed fun. Putting the final nail in the pajama coffin, doing it just for an Instagram photo feels so sad. When did we stop hanging out with our family naturally, instead of trying to curate an image for our internet friends?
If wearing matching pajamas — like the above Rudolph set from Amazon [7] — is your family's tradition, great; I support you 100 percent, because I know every family is different. We all have different things we like to do to get us in the holiday spirit, and for my family, matching pajamas are definitely not it.
Editor's Note: This piece was written by a POPSUGAR contributor and does not necessarily reflect the views of POPSUGAR Inc. Interested in joining our POPSUGAR Voices network of contributors from around the globe? Click here [8].