to not consult SIL on the date of DD's confirmation?

[castnoshadow]

Yesterday spoke to the priest and decided a date for DC's confirmation in London. DH has a religious family who live abroad so the ceremonial stuff is important to them. It's important to me too, but in a different way. There are also various issues with school entry (if DC is going to a religious school, there is a certain date by which the religious stuff needs to be done, so date was dictated a great deal by the priest.)

We sent out the date to family and friends. Cue shit storm from SIL - She and her kids can't make it because it's a weekday and her kids are in school and not on school holidays, so they cannot travel to the confirmation. Why did we not consult her first? She is upset, hurt, angry, frustrated. Her kids are devastated. They don't get to see their cousin confirmed.

I explained our hands were tied over the date, that it is not a big conspiracy to leave her or them out. That I was sorry they couldn't make it and we'd miss them, but we couldn't work the confirmation around her kids' school holidays because we had a time limit.

She said "I have been holding this back, but I'm so angry now it's going to come out. You and DH are so disorganised and messy. You could have done the confirmation ages ago in my children's christmas or easter holidays, but instead, like gypsies, you have gone for a random date that is 'in the nick of time' like everything else you do. I find it selfish and self centred, expecting everyone to jump to your tune when you finally get your act together."

I didn't reply - put down the phone.

Next thing I know, she is furiously texting DH. "I'm so upset. I'm so hurt." Then she's on the phone to MIL. "I am furious at ho disorganised they are..."

WTF is going on? I don't care if she comes or not.

She's obviously got other issues right? Or AIBU?

It's irrelevant insofar as it's absolutely none of our business whether the OP is Christian/Greek Orthodox/Jewish or lives in Waco, Texas. She clearly belongs to a religious group that facilitates individual "confirmations" . Use of the term "confirmation" does not necessarily mean that is what it is referred to in her own religion.

What is relevant is that her SIL seems to believe that the world revolves around her which is fairly unlikely and regardless of the level of importance placed on their religion by her niece/nephew's confirmation, her response was rude and abusive, even if the OP's family have form for being a bit last minute and she was upset at not being able to attend with her kids if that's the norm within their religion.

I'm Irish ex Catholic btw so fully up to speed on how mass confirming works. I would pull my own teeth out rather than go to one voluntarily. . You were far more likely to be told that "you looked like a little tinker" by my grandmothers generation than a gypsy. That's English phraseology imo. Again somewhat irrelevant - again the OP's SIL was being abusive, it was clearly not intended as a compliment and these days is certainly deemed to be racist to boot.

Things change. Time passes. Language evolves. And this happens in Ireland as well as in other places. I think my friend who lives in America (for example) compares the america she lives in today with the Ireland of 1993

I don't work with educated people but I don't hear terms like gypsy or any other offensive label thrown around in my work place anyway.

Squoosh - I just meant that I wasn't a non-Irish person making a snarky comment about the Irish, I'm talking about my own experience.

Cordelia - yes, definitely an older generation thing. My parents would say travellers too, but my grandmother (born in Dublin in 1918) would have said gypsies.

Im in my forties and in the 70s when I was a child our lazy prejudiced terminology would appall us all today. Things have changed a lot, thankfully, but of course they have changed. I don't mean to nit pick but memories of an Irish childhood aren't the barometre for social climate today!

I'm Irish and have heard of people "living like gypsies" and children running about like tinkers. Have also heard people telling their children that they will sell them to the tinkers. All used in a derogatory manner. I think it depends on where you are from which insults you hear bandied about.

It does sound like you have been a little unreasonable as you said that this was important to your OH's family and then you organised a date that you must have known she couldn't make as it's a weekday. If the family find these things important then it would be normal and curteous for you too have given so thought to the dates and consulted with them if you weren't sure if it would clash with school dates. It's not like you didn't know her children are school age children. You obviously have mobile contact with her so a simple text could have sorted this. It does seem as if you have left something important to the last minute and could in fact have organised it better like in the holidays as she pointed if you had wanted too.

All this said her conduct is not acceptable. She is obviously hurt but that doesn't excuse the way she has spoken to you or started texted behind your back. She should be apologising for her attitude and the way she spoke to you. But you could consider opening the door and apologising for your bad planning.

My Irish ex was also threatened with being sold to the Tinkers when behaving badly.
If Poles do use "living like gypsies" then it isn't it probable they picked it up from an English speaker?

Anyway, SIL needs to get over herself. Occasions like Confirmations are not organised around relations school holidays and she's daft to suggest they should be. Not to mention demonstrating a very Unchristian attitude that actually destroys her attempt to claim any sort of moral high ground.

Largely irrelevant, but I'm Irish and living in England, and have had to ask our lovely childminder to stop saying 'Oh, you little tinker!' to my toddler when he's being cheeky. I don't think she intends it pejoratively, and it certainly isn't intended to stigmatise an ethnic group, but it appals me, as someone who grew up around travellers and remembers the 'tinkers' (who were being renamed 'itinerants' by the government and viewed as a social problem) being segregated in a prefab out the back at school.

But for my great-grandmother's generation, of course, 'tinker' wasn't pejorative, it was what the people who went from farm to farm repairing pots and pans ('tinkering') and doing metalwork called themselves.

'Gypsies', in my childhood, were either exotically dressed fortune tellers in storybooks, or what Protestants calked travellers.

What protestants called travellers!??! what!? one protestant in 1970?

OP has your SIL paid for anything to do with this confirmation?. If not, just tell her to get lost & fuck off.

Sorry, C0rde1a, was being a bit tongue in cheek. My childhood recollection of the word 'gypsy' being used for travellers was that it was used only by local rather genteel Church of Ireland ladies I knew because my best friend was the product of a Mixed Marriage, and her mother was on the local C of I flower arranging rota. I remember being struck by it because I actually wasn't sure who they meant, because gypsies for me were mysterious fortune-tellers who wore gold earrings in novels... I think they thought it a more genteel word.

Her kids are devastated. They don't get to see their cousin confirmed

LMAO at this utter bullshit. Her kids will be delighted to miss sitting around in a church. No kid enjoys that - at best they put up with it if there's a present or something in it for them at the end. Failing that, churches are the most boring places in the world, especially during the sermons.

Well I think your DH has the right attitude, tbh.

Ignore the batshit SIL - she's obviously just angry because she hasn't got her own way, it wasn't all about her, and you're daring to do something that is outside of her control.

Really, ignore her.

She may never get over it, but so what? Continue to ignore her.

Yanbu at all, your SiL sounds unhynged, if it meant so much to her, she should make the sacrifices. No don't listen to her, she sounds absolutely toxic. I would not want such a person there.