BiL has invited us for boxing day with the entire family and we have declined as we have plans. We have offered to have him and his family over at another point during the Christmas period and asked him to give us the date that they are free.
The issue is that he has replied with a date and said 'Mum and Dad are free that day too' clearly implying that we should be inviting my in-laws on the same day.
Any advice on how to politely but clearly say no?
I don't want to create conflict or tension but his response is a little rude in my opinion, possibly not intentionally but all the same he should realise that its down to me who I invite round. How do I say this though?
For context, husband's family are not close, have very surface level relationships and we really do not like spending time with them.
We help facilitate a relationship between our children and their grandparents as in we don't stand in the way if they want to see them but it's rare that they ask and after years of running around after them, trying to create a relationship with them and my husbands brother and sister, we've both agreed that we're done with it. By this is I mean that we accept that we won't have the close family that we had hoped for so we now expend the same amount of energy as they do and we both feel better for it.
Given this, we don't really want to have a larger family group meet-up (its awful when theyre all together) hence the suggestion of just BiL on one day and then we were going to suggest another date for PiL to visit (if they contact us).
Personally I'd love to drop them all out but thats not an option atm. I can, however manage a shorter visit with just a few of them at a time but how can I say this without starting a lot of aggro?
Any advice gratefully received.