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.

This is just the thread that I need, currently fuming at how unfairly PIL treat us compared to SIL.

To PIL:
Why, when you are spending Christmas with us, do you also visit your DD for 5days beforehand, like you are doing now, yet when you spend Christmas with her, you won’t visit us as it is “too arduous to visit both houses consecutively”

We live closer to you than she does (3hrs, to her 6), so the sheer hypocrisy is breathtaking.

Remember that you have 2 children, a son as well as a daughter.

I want to tell you to F**k off and spend all of Christmas with your daughter but I know that would only hurt DH and our kids.

Hi Auntie: thanks for the Christmas card. It was nice. Much nicer than the false promises to visit your dying brother in July, then October, then November, then Christmas. My brother and I would love to see you soon, as you ‘hope’ to. It’s not likely though is it? Because dying’s so yukky and uncomfy.

No I am not sad to be missing out on Christmas with extended family. 10hr flight, squashed into 1 room with 2 older teens, being babysitter for the 6 little ones and 2 elderly one while everyone else goes out on the piss.
We'll have a lovely peaceful time at home thanks.

Wishing you a happy Christmas!

my ex drops in for the Disney grandad part with his 3rd wife who is on borrowed time as he is having an affair with his best friends wife...
its worse than a soap opera and im waiting for it all to pop

Sister you are a wonderful hostess and we love seeing you and BIL but you really need to downsize from your massive house that you obviously can’t no longer afford or want to heat. 13c is not an acceptable indoor temperature.

Both of your grandkids have now muted you on WhatsApp. A daily gif sent to all contacts is annoying and doesn’t replace conversation. They know it’s because you can’t be bothered to talk to them and you’ve not been present for the whole of their lives. A performative visit once a year and spending the rest of it bragging to your mates about how clever they are doesn’t create a relationship with them. Both of their parents have now given up trying to tell them that you care as you really don’t and they’ve worked it out for themselves.
The final straw was this years visit spending 6 weeks nearby and only seeing DS for an hour on your last day. Despite him trying to arrange to see you for weeks. And you spent that hour telling him what a great time you’ve had going out with your friends!
When you do move back and expect us to provide care, it’s not happening. You've done nothing for them and they’re done with you.
We’ll be having a great Christmas without you, again.

@Rainallnightwhy are you travelling hundreds of miles and then hosting? How are you doing that? Are you hosting in holiday accomodation?

and why are you hosting someone else’s mother? Someone who won’t even be there herself?

My mum is trying to spoil Christmas. She has spent the entire year telling her kids they can’t come for Christmas which is fair enough but two were invited. She then started dangling it over our heads that we can come with certain restrictions - leaving partners at home alone. Now it’s days to Christmas and she wants us to jump at her invite to go.
She will spend most of the day silently raging behind everyone’s back and then rant about people once they leave but if we don’t go we will be the bad ones.

It’s DP’s mum. Yes hosting in holiday accommodation (actually nicer than our house!). But DP’s sister isn’t coming the 40 minute drive it would take her to get here to see her mum and all of us.

I wish I had a bigger family. I wish the house was full of hustle and bustle. I wish I wasn’t on my own in the kitchen feeling sad. I wish my husband would make up with his siblings. I wish he wasn’t obsessed with work (again).

This christmas will be the first time I wont see my DC wake up on xmas morning and open all their presents, see the joy on their face seeing that "He's been". I don't want them to feel sad because their parent won't do it the way that it's always be done because they "can't be arsed" and would rather go on a bender.

I dont WANT to come to your house and pretend I am all jolly until I am able to go and pick them up again. I don't want to be the odd one out because my siblings are much closer to each other than they are to me. I have tried. I have tried so hard. We just don't have much in common. I want to stay at home and cry about all the shit that has occurred in the last few years.

Friend, I'm really sorry that I messed things up being honest about how I feel about you. Now you don't want to see me and I'm embarassed and a bit broken. I love you. I don't know what to do now. Probably more crying!

SS19 you moved in without asking me. You refuse to take 1 turn a week cooking tea. You eat everything in the fridge. You live here rent free. You ignore me in my own home. You upset the neighbours with your loud music. You need to jog the fuck on.

We thought we'd have one more Christmas with you both, or at least just you, we knew our beautiful girl didn't have long at nearly 14. But you hid a lot and so when you went it was shockingly quick. Dreading Christmas day. I look at you both on the sideboard and cry 💔

SIL hounding us to go to hers on Christmas Day - but only wants us late in the evening once she has had dinner with the rest of the family to which we are not invited. Which means we are essentially hanging round all day to go there. And it’s a 40 minute drive each way.

And - as experienced in years previously - when we arrive everyone is pissed or half asleep on the sofa. And even better is the moment my bum hits any chair I’m told this is granny/brothers/daughters seat so I spend most of the night stood up.

Oh and the buffet she states will be put out isn’t ever put out because they are all still full from Christmas dinner - we have Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve (blended family) so we tend to do picky bits on Christmas Day in the evening so I’ll genuinely be taking picky bits for me and DP.

Im also told regularly by BIL I should change my career to SILs career - because she’s apparently smashing it. Incredibly I am also smashing my career too but I’m just not vocally rubbing it in anyone’s face - or driving around in a mega priced in your face car.

Oh the sighs. And the eye rolls. I am literally dreading it all.

I feel traumatised and left out at my church after what happened last year. I was grieving, unsettled, overwhelmed and finding my feet. I did not deserve what happened to me. A year on and I am still affected by it despite all 'efforts' to drip feed remorse.
Coming to church is a huge struggle yet something I can't just be without.

Mother, you are on your own because you treat people terribly. You are the main character, and everything is secondary to your wants, needs and interests.

You are not on your own because all your children have been turned against you by their spouses, woke politics or the fact 'you can't say anything without offending anyone these days'

I do not appreciate your relentless 'woe is me' telephone calls leading up to Christmas because I and the ONLY one of your children that will have you and I will only have you one in every three years (In-laws/Us/Her) - I also don't appreciate the people you manage to rope in every year to admonish me for leaving a little old lady alone on a day about family. Every. single. year. (This year it was her cleaner, via a Christmas card)

Also, no you can just come when the MIL is here so you get to come every two years. We are not being 'dramatic' when we say no. You absolutely refuse to take responsibility for getting blind drunk the one time we did invite you, then started an argument with the whole of DH family about the fact we are child-free which makes us selfish, that DH family had ONLY so so well in life only because they can 'pass as white' and went of on a immigration rant in a room full of people who, while immigrants, all conribute to the comunities they live in - while you have never worked a day in your life or had a charitable thought.

When you were very gently challenged, you had a temper tantrum worthy of a tictok video, hid in the bathroom, then called the police, said you were being physically attacked and caused the Police to call at the door and thoroughly ruined everyone's Christmas.

So, no, not dramatic. Not because people have been turned against you.

Just Consequences.

SIL - I hugely resent the fact that you changed plans in such a way a few years ago, that I now have to spend every Christmas hosting your mum, who, while lovely, means I can never have a year where I just go to my own parents’ home and sit about in my PJs all morning while my mum and dad cook, but instead have to host MiL and my family every single year. Also, stop fucking moaning that Christmas is busy and stressful for you - not only do I also have DC, but I have a stressful and busy job, while you have never bothered to work. You have hours to yourself everyday so if you can’t manage Christmas it’s because you are lazy, disorganised, and entitled.

I am so grateful I am NC with my parents and will be having a quiet Christmas with my DC.

That will bolster me for being the shoulder to cry on on Boxing Day, which I hope to enjoy dear friends, but with one of you just having got a terminal diagnosis, (this having been decided to be kept from the teenage DC until after Christmas), two cousins who inevitably fall out after a couple of hours in each others' company at the best of times and a clutch of useless exes on the scene, I want you to know that I am braced for choppy waters and ready to spirit half the party off to the pub whenever someone looks ready to launch a trifle across the room.

Why can’t you change it, so you are at home for Christmas?

ExDP, I know you think that it's unfair that everyone including me hasn't just got over your surprise ditch-me-after-25+-years and immediately start dating your "friend" while refusing to move out, but you forget you have no empathy and you'd already moved on without telling me.

Yes it would be great if we could just carry on as before socially including at Xmas, except we're not in a relationship, but that would massively fuck me up because I can't even look at your sack of shit face without being consumed by rage, and a massive advantage of what you did is that I don't have to do what you want any more. And my friends think you're a twat!

My SIL is a self obsessed, arrogant bleep and I'm so bloody glad she's too "poorly" to come on Christmas day now.

Putting on my best "oh no what a shame" face of course.

Ah but do you get another delivery of fresh stuff for the 24th? I’m guessing not?

They live abroad. We do year about. I’d love to say we’re staying home, or see them another time, but we are so rarely all together, I just feel I have to go with it. We will have a nice time together I’m sure, I just wish this wasn’t the set up. Some years I or SiL host so it’s not every other year at least. Thank you for asking!