To ask what you're dreading most about Christmas with your inlaws this year? ( lighthearted )

[BossaNovaOnAllNight]

I know its a time of year for giving and being with each other but let's be real, the people we spend christmas with don't magically have a personality transplant just because of the date on the calendar. What are you already anticipating will wind you up this Christmas? I'll go first, DH'S grandmother noticing everyone's weight ( gain, loss anything ) and bringing it up just before dinner when we are all about to eat a ton. DSIL will undoubtedly say something my autism finds unacceptable, like she's lied about something not arriving from Etsy and got a refund from a small business . Oh and I truly do not want to go on a huge family walk in the freezing cold really, I run daily and want a day off. As I say, this is light hearted and I will have a lovely time and I can't wait to see my in-laws but its a full on few days haha. Aibu to ask what you're dreading?

My MIL does a version of this, but it’s the same bloody game that we play EVERY SINGLE TIME we’re together, and have played for the past 12 years (when the kids were old enough to understand how to play it). Everybody bloody hates it, but it’s the only game she understands the rules of. Then, after insisting we all play around the table, she will get distracted by something random, so everyone ends up having to shout “it’s your turn MIL”!

She also keeps telling me that coming to ours is “like being in a hotel”! This is because she will not do a thing, offer only when everything has already been done, and then sit in the best seat and put the telly on. I’m ecstatically excited for this, can you tell?!

The last time my fil was here at Christmas he was actually brought here at 4am on Christmas day 2021 by the police as of course he had gone out on a pub crawl in Glasgow (over 80 miles from here) and got hammered - he lives on an island so no ferry. He took my young dcs cup and poured whisky in it and then sat it back down hoping no one would notice. He's never been in my house or spoke to me again. I hope he has a REALLY SHITE day in his care home wheres he's still behaving like an utter entitled cunt. No wonder my sil and bil moved abroad...

Dear God. This is me. This is why my adult DC take the piss out of me isn’t it?

Thanks for starting this thread OP. It’s been very educational 😳

That they’re not here anymore 😔

I'm sorry. But I may have laughed quite a lot at this.

Every family has an "Uncle Dickhead" - you got the FIL upgrade.

My DH got my mother, who had driven me so mad that at about 2am on boxing day morning I wanted to push her down the stairs to get her out of my house.
I'm not joking. I was really going to do it. I offered to go to prison to GET HER OUT.
DH, being wonderful or worrying about his next meal/laundry took her home next day.

Hahahahahahaha this is why I started this thread, stuff like this just cracks me up

Neither my parents nor my in-laws like Christmas so we just refuse to go to either. Love mine to bits but I don't really want Christmas with DS7 in a house where there are no decorations and it's just a Sunday with a nicer lunch - they don't bother with anything to open and have already chosen, bought and used their "presents" from me. And my in-laws do have a tree but are teetotal vegetarians and bang on and on about how my hardworking SiL has to work over Christmas so they'll just have Christmas dinner on the 26th/when she is free.

We will visit, it'll just be in the boring bit. 27th-31st.

The year we did it all on our own (they were sick) was so boring. The more the merrier- always have a laugh!

My in laws are lovely, lovely people. But I’ve been hearing the same stories about neighbours they had 40 years ago for the last 25 years. I’ve never met them, will never meet them, I don’t care! We also get treated to MIL running through who sent them Christmas cards and who didn’t this year. But there is always plenty of fantastic food, free flowing wine (really good stuff!) and they adore DC. They are kind, generous people, just a bit tedious at times. We’ll miss them dreadfully when they’re gone though.

Never see my in-laws as one lives on the other side of the world and the others are always on a cruise.

When my mum.was alive it was the freezing cold house and no decorations up! Normally with moaning about she hated Christmas while getting pissed up

I have had to cook on an Aga for a few days once or twice a year for the last nine or 10 years. My observations are these:
•. have a really good, thick oven cloth or oven gloves handy because I find the oven doors awkward and I almost always burn my wrists.
• the ovens are always slower than you think they will be, even the fast oven
•. But the advantage of this is that it is less easy to overcook something and much easier to keep things warm. You almost don’t have to worry about the oven temperature: just calculate in hours and shove it in. You can’t control the temperature in the same way you do an ordinary oven and that has in fact has taught me quite a lot about cooking.
•. In contrast, I find that the hot plates on the top are astonishingly quick and you really do have to be careful about this.

cooking on the aga always reminds me how very useful a microwave is, especially for cooking vegetables. So if you possibly can, use that as well.

Does she also tell you where she had bought them all from??

We try not to mention anything we need either. 🤣
We visited last week and i was a little chilly.
Went to get my jumper.
My mil leapt up barrelled passed me and started hauling many different blankets from the cupboard. 🫣

By that stage you cannot say no thank you.

God forbid she starts searching the garage or shed for things.

My parents are like this, then complain that I always expect them to do everything for me despite the offer being made repeatedly until I finally say yes

I'm dreading the fact that this will likely be my lovely MILs last Christmas 💔

On tea, my MiL has known me since 2004 and still makes me get up and go and look at the tea she's made me to check it's the right strength. And asks me which size mug I want. It baffles me. I now just try and say no, or ask for a coffee which comes out of the Nespresso machine so cannot be questioned!

I love my inlaws and MIL is a great host. She loves doing the dinner and says as we're both working we dont have time and she does it all. No scrimping on food, booze or heat.

However... the only thing is the tandem farting from them. Their sphincters are not what they were any any sudden movement is accompanied by a loud trump every time.

The only bonus is you can slip a sly one out and no one notices

The touching. Mil touches me every time she speaks and it slowly drives me a bit insane. I find myself not able to focus on what she’s actually saying because all I can feel are her finger tips tapping my arm. I’ll spend the day trying to keep items of furniture between us.

MIL and GMIL's competitive under eating. No-one other than you two care that you have eaten half a cherry tomato, a single paper thin slice of cucumber and looked at a cup of tea this morning and as a result might only manage a tiny amount of dinner. Nor do we want to hear you moan about the amount of food on the table whilst you dig around the buffet (holding everyone up) for the smallest roast potato you can find and insist on sharing a pig in blanket and a Yorkshire pudding between you. Nor do we want to hear about how you will only manage 1 desert spoon of Christmas pudding with a drizzle of custard and how you will now be stuffed until new year. We are about to absolutely stuff ourselves with Christmas dinner and Christmas pudding, shut up. The only plus is that we and BIL and SIL refuse to have MIL's arsehole of a partner in our houses.

Then there is putting up with MIL's emotionally and financially abusive partner on boxing day (who she wont leave) who is just an arsehole. Whilst MIL makes every excuse under the sun for his arsehole behaviour and walks on eggshells the entire day. All the while he sits there moaning about Christmas and how he hates it. Drops huge moaning hints that he is pissed off he's not invited to Xmas day and how he had to have a cold plate of Xmas dinner that MIL always insists on plating up and taking home for him. Drones on about his many illnesses. Spouts absolute nonsense (usually incredibly racist and actual far right beliefs) and presents it as absolute fact and is a knob when called out on it. Upsets everyone by just been unpleasant. Moans that the children are too loud and annoying and will take presents off children if he deems them too loud and annoying. Is incredibly ungrateful and rude about all presents bought for him - "why did you buy that? it's horrid, I'm not using it", "you've wasted your money" are common phrases. No-one buys him anything now. Every Christmas reduces MIL to tears as he doesn't buy her a present - apparently putting up with her and letting her live in his house is his gift to her and he proudly tells everyone that. Expresses he has no idea why his own children don't come to see him and are NC and how their mum must of turned them against him. BIL, SIL, DH and I actually have knobhead bingo for boxing day tea.

Oh and the traditional cheerful boxing day table conversation at MIL's where MIL, arsehole, GMIL, GFIL and Great Grandma all talk about if they will live another year, what ails them this year, what they went to the Dr with this month. Go through all the people they know who have died that year. All the people they know who have been diagnosed with terminal illness that year. Lament about long dead pets. It's a barrel of laughs. All the while the children must sit in silence and be grateful for their half cherry tomato, paper thin slice of cucumber, half a slice of bread, 1 cube of cheese and lettuce leaf. God forbid any of them don't like something, Arsehole then becomes the desert police and insists the children (BIL's are actually teenagers and mine are baby and 4) empty their plates or they cannot have desert (trifle). BIL, SIL, DH and I almost wet ourselves with laughter when BIL's youngest clipped back at him, "don't even like it anyway" last year and he was horrified that BIL didn't discipline him for "talking back". He'd be even more horrified that nephew got extra KFC on the way home for his clip back.

2weeks! I couldn’t stay in someone’s else’s house for 2 weeks. I’d go mad!

MIL will ask me for the seventy hundredth time "what is your job again?". I will answer "Director of Communications and Engagement" again. She will then move on to "it's a strange sort of job isn't it? I'm not sure that anyone ever did a job like that in my day" and then she will mutter "strange job" at intervals throughout the day. (Not my actual job title BTW but fairly close). She has done this for the 2.5 years that I have had this job.

Both DM and MIL will barely eat anything and profes to be astounded that anyone could eat as much as the rest of us (eating a normal sized meal...).

DM will be upset that we don't watch the King's speech. DMIL will be scandalised that we don't go to church on Christmas morning (because we go to midnight communion and the Christmas morning service isn't much of a service so we get our spiritual fix at midnight).

DMIL will insist on talking about radio 4 and poetry to DD's BF who is already terrified that we are 'too posh'.

This year we also have a random overseas student from DS's university house as she can't afford to go home for Christmas. She's from Japan and I genuinely don't know what she is going to make of us!

On the plus side we are going away for new year so I only have a few days to hold it all together for!

I miss my in laws . I was well blessed with them. ( miss my parents too).. my daughters wife says im a brilliant mum in law.. n that she loved me to bits.. we sometimes go shopping together just the two of us.

All the tat they buy my kids which doesn’t get played with or broken straight away. End up doing a tip run soon after Christmas.

Why do you go) I dont get it

My FIL will not have anyone speak when they’re eating a meal

You literally eat all your meals with them, even Christmas dinner, in complete silence, just listening to plate scraping and chewing noises?!

This is completely bizarre - so authoritarian and joyless. DS had a schoolfriend whose mother was the same, they were all forbidden to talk at mealtimes. No surprise he and his brothers preferred to eat at other people’s houses!

Why is finding theft from a small business immoral an autism thing?

That’s a very normal response.