To think Boxing Day is for family and not football?

[Felicityfennel]

So sick of it! Every year, DH and DS want to go to DH’s hometown to watch the Boxing Day game. Plans have to be worked around this and given it’s an 8 hour round trip, it’s pretty much an overnight stay. If we’re with the in-laws for Christmas, fine, crack on. But when we’re in our home town and have other family to see, really?! It also means an early night Christmas Day as they want to be up and out to get to the game on Boxing Day the next morning 😭

She literally says in the OP that it is an 8 hour round trip.

If this was a post about Mum and daughter wanting to go to the BD sales and leaving Dad and son at home would we be having this debate? It’s horses for courses (literally in our house; we love a bit of Boxing Day racing). We don’t all have to want to do the same thing. It’s ok to not be stuck to each others side all the time.

You cannot be serious. Are you always this controlling? No one stops you from being boring at home, but force other people into it is just weird.

This. You aren't joined at the hip.

Hated their mother 🤣 my mother would have been the first one in the stands. You are being ridiculous.

Sorry I meant that you wouldn't know the distances away fixtures would involve.

Yes, mine too. I once took her to lunch at her club in hospitality and the match on Boxing day as her Christmas present. She was thrilled to bits.

Father and son going to football together. Staying over at granny and granddads. Hmm, no family involved there at all.

If the away fixtures are all going to be more than an 8 hour trip away then really the time has come to support a more local team.

As many others have said, it's not the going to a football match that is the issue in itself, it's the travelling halfway across the country to do it. It's just utterly self-indulgent when football is everywhere.

If you can't put your foot down and say no to half your family sodding off for a day and a night to watch a football match when it involves an 8 hour round trip and an overnight stay over the precious Christmas bank holidays, when can you?

Like I said before, if this pattern gets established there will be no more family Boxing Days and her husband and son will just be absent during this time, making it difficult to make plans with the OP's family.

They can always go on years when they are staying with the in laws. Hell, they could even arrange their home and away Christmases so they spend Christmas with the in laws in years when his team are playing at home. That would be a sensible compromise.

But this is just setting things up for Boxing Day every year to be a day when the OP doesn't get to spend time with her husband and son.

It's the sacred family time that according to some posters everyone should be forced to endure whether they want to or not. 🤣

Alternative team to support has been suggested. The OPs DH does support his hometown team, not some glory seeking Manchester United supporter.

Yes Boxing Day matches usually alternate so only one year in two is at a team's home ground.

@MargotBamborough it's been explained to you that you don't just choose to support another team. If you are a committed fan it doesn't work like that.

I also think all this 'family time' is staring to sound like work 'presenteeism' - a family can mean many things- it doesn't have to mean constantly glued to each other like some kind of American round robin Xmas card.

I would take a bloke who goes to Boxing Day football with his son over one who thinks he is very much 'a family man' but is actually down the pub 4 nights a week all year round or going on 3 hour bike rides constantly and rarely takes full responsibility for all the kids , to give you some down time.

Look at the bigger picture.

I’d like the option to have Xmas with family at Xmas, lounge around when they’ve gone and not have to plan everything around a football game halfway across the country.

Is staying home in your PJ’s or popping in to nearby relatives really planning around a trip that you will not be making? To top it all off, its the the first trip he’s done on Boxing Day that involved him staying away. OP you are a drama queen.

The rest of the family are not committed fans though.

I don't really give a shit how it works, tbh. If you make your whole family's Christmas revolve around you taking an 8 hour round trip to watch a football match, you are putting your own hobby before everyone else.

That's far more self-centred and indeed far more controlling than saying, "Boxing Day is family time, please can you limit it to local matches?"

A day just sitting around doing nothing at home and eating crap when there's an alternative of an exciting trip out to watch some live sport with family and visit a new place?
Football every time!
The Boxing Day game is about as traditional as it gets.
Laze around the day after.

Do his family not matter then? Just her side?

But they clearly do spend Christmas with his family some years.

It would make sense for them to go to the football the years they are with the in-laws and seeing his side of the family, and see the OP's family on years when they aren't staying with the in laws.

She says that right in the OP.

I can't stand football... but YABU. This is their thing. and it's as much a tradition as anything else. If you want to be really pedantic about it, the actual tradition is that it's only a holiday for servants, so technically you are doing well getting the day off 😀

And Boxing day is family time ie lounge around in your PJs and eat chocolate or be forced into an arrangement the OP makes unilaterally putting her foot down or knocking on the head anything her husband and his family and eldest child might enjoy doing?

But all the op wants to do is sit around and do nothing so how is him and his son going out stopping that?

Because they're not going to be forced to endure family time, apparently.

She wants to spend time with her husband and son on Boxing Day, and to have the option of them all seeing her family.

There's nothing unreasonable about that. Her husband and son have years when they are staying in his home town over Christmas, plus literally the whole of the rest of the football season literally every year to go to matches together.

Doing it this year when they are nowhere near where the match is sets a precedent for them doing it every year, which is clearly what the OP is objecting to.

But like I said, I'd have strategically invited Nanny and Grandad over on Boxing Day, to have a more solid reason to object to this.

It sounds like you really hate your family.

It sounds like your the OP using a different username or an absolute crank.

They can spend time together or seeing the family every other day or weekend of the year iam unsure what is so special about seeing the family on boxing day over any other day/weekend?m, is there some special conversations magic that happens because its boxing day, or are you one if then weirdos who say "Christmas is about family" which itself is a made up tradition