It’s a Christmas one sorry! AIBU not inviting my in-laws to spend it with my family?

YANBU
Completely agree with @PestoHoliday and other posters that it would be unreasonable to impose extra guests on your mum, who presumably knows your MIL and SIL are together on Xmas and would invite if she had capacity.

As your family grows or your mum ages things may well change again and your big family Xmas together will be a fond memory.

DH has a choice, spend “your family Xmas” with you or spend it with his mum and sister.

There are no alternatives as they live so far away it would be impossible to see them both over the Xmas period. Presumably they are quite used to small Xmas celebrations before you joined their family, it is their norm. Your husband is quite unreasonable, especially as none of the additional work is going to fall on his shoulders!

Hold firm and make changes only when you have a larger home and/or your own children and want to do so!

@OtterlyMad So i have a similar situation albeit just my MIL. My family is reasonably large, although we have lost a few members over the past few years, but there is always a pressure to include my MIL at all my family gatherings. I love MIL a lot but sometimes i just want time with my family without her being there.

Its a difficult one and i know completely where you are coming from. How do you family get on with your inlaws? Does you DM get on with your MIL? Are they friendly? In my situation my DM and MIL get on really well so its hard to exclude.

Its your DM's decision ultimately so i would ask her if there is room for 2 more but you need to have a chat with your DH about his expectations too and how imposing other inlaws etc is not your decision alone and he shouldnt be pressuring you.

I definitely don't think yabu. I think your DH is UR.

You've two options, both have shitty outcomes. If you do cave as there is animosity brewing in your marriage, I would insist it is a one off, come next Christmas when it is their turn, invite ALL your family to their home. It sounds ridiculous because it IS on both sides.

Is he sure his DM will want to go, before causing this stress.

I think it’s fine for two adults to have Christmas together. We need to normalise quiet celebrations and not put pressure on people. I would much prefer to keep things separate too OP you are not a bad person.

I’m single and my mum is widowed, usually one of my siblings will host us but if for some reason one year all of them were having Christmas at their ILs there is absolutely no way I would expect to be invited, especially ILs who live the other side of the country from me and who presumably I hardly knew.

If your DH really can’t bear the thought of his sister and mum having Christmas just the two of them then maybe you need to go back to having separate Christmases, at least until you have children. That would be a more reasonable solution than expecting your parents to host his family.

I'll say!

I wonder who these judgemental posters open their doors to on Christmas Day. Presumably they're flat out rounding up isolated elderly people, neighbours and the homeless in the run-up to Christmas.

I have always done the Xmas with one side of family and New Year with the other be abuse almost 500 miles apart. Now my parents are both dead we go to DH Mum who is only living parent at some point over Xmas. It might be Boxing day or 27th. She is not alone on Xmas day but if she was we would have to go to bed with her because she won't travel to us. It's difficult because we have plenty of space and she doesn't.

OP's already said her mum would say yes because she'd feel obliged to.

And of course she would. She'd be emotionally blackmailed by her selfish son in law "too think of his poor lonely mum" despite the fact this is a woman who's idea of Christmas is doing every singl thing in her kitchen herself. And you're adding strangers in the mix.

Nah.

We got married on our own. Mainly because we didn’t want any fuss. We didn’t tell anyone.

We’ve never had big family celebrations, just not our thing really.

None of my extended family has ever met any of DH’s extended family despite the majority all living fairly nearby. They could walk past each other in the street and have no idea who the other person was.

My late MIL would come to stay with us for a few days over Christmas and was welcomed at my brother's home where the Day was celebrated with Boxing Day being at our house. However as the children got older and a bit rowdier she decided not to come as it was too much for her, we would go over either before or after the Day to see her and take her out.

I can only go by what I would do in that situation and knowing what my mum would have done as well if asked.

It's moot anyway as the OP doesn't want to do it so no-one will be guilted into anything.

That still sounds to me like she would be guilting her mum into saying yes when she may not want to.

YANBU. Is he planning on his mum hosting all of your family next year? He is being so unreasonable ! I’d probably say you can invite them over to stay with you 26th-29th or something if you’ve space for the 2 of them…. But that’s more than generous and certainly not necessary to offer if you haven’t space or don’t want to.

Stand your ground, he’s being very unreasonable. I bet you he’s planning you won’t get to see yours every year as his mum won’t be hosting your family, but he will at the cost of stressing your family out. He sounds very manipulative and I’d be looking out for more red flags in the relationship.

Maybe it's just me but I would like to think that if I went to my mum and explained the situation I wouldn't need to force her and she would say of course.
OP doesn't want to do it and is giving a whole load of reasons why not, fair enough but own the decision and move on.

Absolutely this! 👆YANBU @OtterlyMad As you have repeatedly pointed out to the hard of understanding on this thread, your DH's DM and DSis are not "alone" - they are together. Alternating Christmas at your DM's and your DH's DM's has worked well for years, so why does it need to change? I know you've said that your DM would agree to inviting them if she were asked, but I wonder what your DH would say if your DM actually said No? I think it's interesting that your DH views your position as "gatekeeping" his family, rather than simply protecting your own DM from ending her Christmas day in a state of exhaustion!
Stick to your guns OP - there's no need to change an arrangement that already works.

We have this planned this year - DSC are with their Mum and the two of us are going to hole up with the dog, watch ludicrous Christmas films and drinks lots of champagne. Every other year is the big clan Christmas which I love but I am SO looking forward to this year's calm solitude.

I do understand you can't impose this on your Mum. Would it be worth a conversation with her? As long as once you have space you invite both sides to yours if it's a big Christmas, I don't think you're being unkind to tell MIL and SIL have their own Christmas every other year.

Your mum will run herself ragged? Do you not all muck in? Help her out! If she says yes, and his family says yes then so be it! If they are that quiet and reserved, would they even want to? Set their expectations so they can decide. The "letting your hair down" comments seems really quite juvenile.

For the sake of 2 people cmon no point arguing over it yet then there...our family is massive both sides and we all help mum and we all pile in sometimes extra peeps sometimes not it doesn't matter for us

No. As I said earlier, I got married 6 years ago, been with my DH nearly 10 years our parents have met 3 times in that time.

They don’t have much in common but mostly it’s because they live hours from each other.

My DH and I both moved away from home for uni, and then again for work. It is quite common in our generation to not live close to our families and therefore for each other’s families to live close by.

It might become more common again with the younger generations who are struggling to afford to move out of home.

Your post tells the op you can understand why her DH is disappointed in her and that she is mean not to invite them. I think that’s incredibly harsh.

Inviting someone you don’t know as well can easily change the mood and dynamic of the day, and also, sometimes yes, inviting more people does put extra stress on things. I spent xmas at my mum’s last year. There were only 7 of us in a 3 bed house but it was utter chaos with not enough room and like op has detailed, not enough actual seats for dinner.

Plus no one has to justify not inviting someone to their house when they are hosting.

I probably will because I am widowed, no kids and the youngest sib. As things stand, it doesn’t bother me.

We extend the invitation and rather that than someone have a lonely Christmas.
for instance, we have nieces who bring bf, my DH sister brings her FIL.

we host, it’s exhausting, and we have close to 20 usually.

Hell no! They are two people making a new family together, not marrying dynastic lines together.

I'd rather gargle glass than spend time with my SIL's toxic father and (particularly) stepmother. She's like the Angel of Death. Told brother and SIL's children if they didn't believe in Jesus they wouldn't get Christmas presents.

My other SIL's mother doesn't speak a word of English and strongly disapproves of women drinking alcohol so has a cat-bum face throughout the Christmas she was at my parents in-law's house.

My in-laws and my parents couldn't be more different. We've done a handful of family events of the past 30 years and they are always rather awkward and stiff.

The More The Merrier crowd never think that perhaps some families aren't necessarily compatible with every other family.

And once again for the hard of thinking, a mother and her adult daughter spending Christmas together is not spending Christmas alone.

Indeed. My DP and I have spent - of the 26 Christmases we've been together - precisely 2 of them with family (once wth my parents, once with hers). The rest have been almost all just the two of us, with 2 spent with friends.

We like it that way. It's not "sad" in the slightest.

No, not two whole families.
I have 4 siblings, their in-laws are not related to me.
Each family gets one new family member, the entire families don’t merge, only meetings on special occasions, DGC birthday or similar.