As we round the corner to Christmas, I feel compelled to say something to women across the land:

It’s OK.

It’s OK that you didn’t get the same amount of presents for each child.

It’s OK that you shopped for yourself. Not once or twice, but often.

It’s OK that you didn’t meet your Christmas budget while negotiating a trillion-dollar Christmas season that challenges every stretch of your moral judgment, your Hallmark sensibilities and your maternal instinct.

Or that you never even set a budget.

It’s OK, in fact, that you once again did not figure out the American consumer economy and the part you should and should not play at Christmas.

It’s OK, at the same time, that you decided to rely on Amazon, aka the “everything store” to send out-of-town packages instead of staying up three nights in a row making homemade bags, bows and packages.

It’s OK that you misstepped often, especially when it came to spending, that you knew when you were doing it that you should have asked for a merchandise exchange for that bathrobe, which would have allowed you to skip shipping costs when you exchanged it for a different color, but you didn’t want to take the time for $6.95.

It’s OK that you were scammed, not once, but twice, by companies you never heard of, only to find when you have to return the item, which you now do, because it doesn’t work, you have to pay to send it to Australia, which will cost more than the refund and “we can’t guarantee we will receive the item.”

You are a Christmas magician, after all, not a skeptic, for whom the devil is in the (ignored, forgotten and mishandled) details, which are so many (think cooking, shopping, crafting, wrapping, churching, socializing and entertaining).

It’s OK if you felt guilty during the entirety of December.

It’s also OK if you didn’t.

There’s a lot that goes into the making of a Christmas.

And we women, we’re expected to know what that is.

We are the keepers of community, family values, moral judgment, generous impulses, and general miscellanea, and none so apparent than at Christmas time.

Which makes it understandable that we want to hibernate for two weeks after we read “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” except we would miss everything we spent the past month working for.

Clearly, the rules of Christmas are variable. Nobody tells us how to do it and what would happen if we didn’t. What we know is what we saw our mothers do, driven as they were by Ladies Home Journal to stay up all night making tabletop Christmas trees out of green and red net.

It would be better if we attuned to some internal guiding light, some voice besides our over-reaching mothers, that spoke authentically to us of our individual capabilities, budgets and hormone balances.

But the pull of societal expectations, along with those childhood memories, not to mention Hallmark movies and Wall Street, is bewitching. The sights and sounds, the oohs and ahs of Christmas are addicting, and often of our making.

Which is why I’m suggesting a mantra, telling ourselves at the end of each day, “I’m still a good person and a great Christmas creator even if I never remembered to give to the Giving Tree at work.”

It’s OK that you killed the poinsettias, because who thinks to water a poinsettia anyway?

While you’re at it, go ahead and forgive yourself for chocolate — even though every night you tell yourself that tomorrow, you’re going to quit eating chocolate bells in the middle of the night.

That's when they do their best ringing, telling you that Christmas is coming. The goose is getting fat.

It’s OK if you are too.

You’ll need that extra layer for hibernation.

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