Say here what you can’t say in real life - Christmas edition

[Rainallnight]

If you have someone in your life who is driving you mad or making you brim with rage this Christmas, tell them here!

Get it off your chest in a safe space so you can turn around, smile, and offer them a sherry.

NB - this isn’t AIBU. All gripes are correct and permitted.

I will start.

SIL, I am furious that we have driven hundreds of miles with small DC to spend Christmas in your part of the country, including hosting YOUR mother for the duration, only to find that you are not spending Christmas Day with us, AND that you have not yet deigned to pin down a day to even visit. Furious, I tell you.

I hope everyone knows that you don’t have to tolerate a lot of these toxic relationships. I’m sure some are unavoidable, but often you can just say ‘no’. You only have one life.

That actually adult DS And girlfriend, it’s not ok to go play happy families on Christmas morning with her family when they live with me the rest of the year.
I want the Christmas morning with you both.

DD's (adult) boyfriend: just STFU and stop complaining. Nobody is forcing you to spend Christmas here, in fact I'd rather you didn't but I'm tolerating you for my DD's sake and hoping quite hard that she sees the light and dumps you very soon. I don't care if you can't sleep without your speshul pillow from home, if it matters that much bring it with you. I don't care if you think our house is cold and damp. It's not, it's just also not a 24/7 centrally heated box in central London like you're used to. Wear some fucking pyjamas if you're cold. I especially don't care if you don't like vegetarians who eat fake meat. Don't eat it then. Maybe you'd like to cook Christmas dinner? Nope, thought not. You might think you're edgy with your constant needling and picking arguments to show how clever you are but everyone else thinks you're a twat. Oh and your manners are outrageous, I've literally not heard you say please or thank you since you got here. You're a boring ego pig and I'm never inviting you here again.

I’m a bit fed up of the “we’ll only buy for the kids” line from my older siblings.

they have children, I do not. So I’m expected to spend £50+ per child (there’s four of them), while they get me nothing.

I love my friend’s children, but I dislike spending time with them. Our families are very close so we come together at Christmas but I find the children overwhelming.
I understand they are excited but they have a tendency to take over everything and are very spoilt. I sometimes long for the days before their arrival, when things were adult focused.

😢

Why are we hosting Christmas for the first time? I know you all thought it’d be nice because we’re the only ones with kids but I’ve barely slept this year, we’ve had a horrific two months since I went back to work, we’re shattered and the youngest now has chicken pox. I love you all but I am exhausted at the thought of all of you in my house for four days, waking up at 10am and going to bed at midnight, whilst we’re up at 5am every day with young children. Would it kill you to offer to wake up with the kids just once? My husband and I haven’t had a lie in together in 5 years. And maybe instead of all prioritising your afternoon snooze/ read, you could actually offer to play with the 4 yo who loves you… in particular, mum and dad, have you genuinely forgotten how relentless it is having young kids?! Why do you just leave us to deal with it all?!?!

All I want to do this year is lie on the sofa for days, watch things that no one else wants to watch, waste hours on the internet, drink wine and eat cheese. I don't want to be running around after everyone else and at the same time I know that I'm choosing to run around after everyone else. But I'm so fucking bone tired.

WTAF have you been doing with your time?! Your dc are all in school, you are a sahm and 4 days before Christmas when the children are now off you have announced that you STILL have to do your Christmas shopping! Seriously,WHAT DO YOU DO ALL DAY? (Because it’s certainly NOT cleaning your house!)…And I know it’s not a money issue! Get yourself together ffs!

Oh also, I’m sick of it. I’m working till the 24th. I don’t want to come for my fourth meal out this month after work!!! But if I say no, you’ll get all pissy and threaten not to come on Christmas Day.

Make a new year's resolution to leave him? 💐

I don’t feel I can start a casual convo with anyone at work or parents from school about how I was raised Jewish. So we did xmas (except for one year where we did Hanukkah instead) but not as ‘big’ as others. This year i’ve done my first ever stockings for my own kids so it will be nice to see how they react as I never had one.

To our great and glorious new to us leader who started banging on about Christmas IN MAY while the department was collapsing.

Effing secret bloody Santa where you have to randomly buy a gift without even knowing who it's for. Being so mean that you had to be frogmarched to Tesco by the admin staff to buy a measly selection box as a quiz prize, let alone buying all the drinks at least. And no it's not because you're skint.

But the cherry on the top (apart from your grifting, yet again, to get three weeks leave at least over Christmas) is the fact that you spout off about being such a wonderful committed Christian and yet for you Christmas is all about pigs in blankets. Baby Jesus doesn't even get a look in. Let alone community spirit or goodwill to all.

If there is any justice in the universe may the 2026 Year of the Horse be the one that finally exposes you for what you are - along with the enabling senior managers who think the sun shines out of your perineum.

Merry Yule!

Fortunately I am not. Separated years ago. It’s for our child that I invite him here. Autistic child wouldn’t cope with visiting his flat.

My mum died 10 weeks ago today and I know exactly what you mean. 💐

Who the bloody hell takes their 3 toddler grandkids to the M&S foodhall on the Sunday before Christmas and then let's all three run wild?

And also, MIL - why in everlasting Jesus' name did you not teach FIL table manners when you first got together?! I've done it for your son - you're welcome.

Some very sad ones on here. Genuinely sorry to anyone suffering at the moment.

To add a light hearted one...

FIL if you move a stool to sit on the wrong side of my breakfast bar this year then I may beat you to death with a parsnip!

My kitchen was perfectly designed for socialisation while I'm cooking. There are THREE sides of the breakfast bar where you can sit, chat and not get in the way. The position of the bar stools are a clue. But standing on the side where I am working and then huffing every time I ask you to move so I can access a drawer is maddening.

I am also really excited for you to ask me 9,234 times "how I'm getting on" as code for "is it nearly ready yet".

I am a solid hour late every single year. We all know this. It is openly discussed. There are snacks everywhere. You will not starve.

Yeah that's pants. I try to instigate the opposite for my brother. Ask him not buy DH & I anything because I feel rotten that he's buying for 5 and we're buying for 1. 🙈

It’s been a few years now so I’m used to it but it’s still pretty shit

It pisses me off that my mother will spend time with my siblings at Christmas, but never me and my children. Every Christmas she'll spend with my sister, or travel hours and hours to my brother and his family. Yet she can't make the 15 minute drive to see me and mine on Christmas day.
I'm good enough to look after her high maintenance dog (who likes to piss and shit everywhere) while she spends Christmas in another country.
Not doing it again.

My advent calendar ended up on the floor somehow. I was upset by this and it now looks wrong as things fell out of it. just want to throw it in the bin and not bother. I said nothing to the person that dropped it, but really I'm seething.

We’ve both had a tough year. It’s been horrendous for me. You really hurt me when you cancelled me visiting you with a laugh emoji instead of an apology in your message. I will not be planning to visit you again.
Son, there can be no “slip ups” or “blips”. You will break me. I want a life. You are an adult and we cannot support you indefinitely.

To my 6 year old: I love you to bits, but you are being a right prick at the moment. Stop getting up so early. Stop annoying everyone. It's Christmas, it comes every year. It's not that deep... there is NO NEED to lose your shit like this.

Everyone else around me is pretty well behaved... so far 😂

I think we are related Wiffin

Just stop with the diet culture. I hate opening your fridge to see a wall of 0% fat everything. No foods are naughty, no we don’t need to walk off dinner, no we don’t need to have done anything in particular to deserve to eat, I don’t care if you only allow yourself to eat [insert totally normal foodstuff] on this one day a year. I don’t care about your body image issues and how you just feel better in yourself when you weigh less. I do care that you wrongly equate slim with healthy and that you will actually argue this with me and defend all of the above despite the absolute hell we have been through helping my daughter, your granddaughter and niece, recover from anorexia. Even at the worst moments you haven’t been able to accept just how unhelpful all those comments are and see how steeped in diet culture you even are. It is so deeply hurtful that my closest family just doesn’t care enough to think about it properly because they think they are normal and anyway “she looks fine now, surely she doesn’t need more weight?” You have destroyed for me the family myth of how brilliant our Christmasses are with our whole huge family together. It isn’t close and cosy and joyful, it’s suffocating and there’s no escape and you have no idea of the scars you open every time you drop something about skipping the next meal because none of us will need it surely? I am not overthinking it, I am traumatised because I nearly lost my daughter and I just don’t want to do any of this shit any more. You will all be shocked and upset that I am breaking all the traditions when I finally crack and tell you I’m not coming. You will say it’s my fault and you won’t understand what you did. It will probably be next year, I can’t handle feeling like this again, the panic has been in the pit of my stomach and growing for the past two months. We are all supposed to be so close but when I try to tell you, you give me a wall of reasons why I’m the one with the problem, because actually it’s all about the one big happy family where individual problems are obstacles. You bulldoze over them rather than supporting each other to help. It’s bullshit and if this year is anything like what I fear it will be, next time I really am going to just bugger off on holiday for the whole two weeks and leave you all to ‘enjoy’ overeating for two days as if it’s the highlight of your fucking year.