To tell them not to bother coming for Xmas?

[WantToHibernate]

We are doing Xmas dinner this year for my husbands family and my mum and brother. We have a mix of vegans, vegetarians and meat eaters so dinner menu will reflect this.

I’ve been vegan for 20 years and my daughter who is 17 has become vegan this year. My husband and other child eat meat.

My mother and brother have always disapproved of me being vegan. Over the years they’ve told me I’m wrong and will be ill. They also do stupid things like make animal noises when they eat meat which I just roll my eyes at. Now they’ve found out, whilst discussing Xmas dinner menus at our house this weekend, that my daughter has become vegan and they’ve responded as expected, telling her she’ll be ill, that she shouldn’t listen to me ‘brainwashing and bullying’ her, quizzing her on why she has become vegan, telling her she’s mad and no better than them. My daughter remained calm, said it was her decision, that I obviously haven’t bullied or brainwashed her, that she doesn’t think she’s any better than anyone else, she just wants to be vegan. When they continued were quiz her on why she has become a vegan, they called her a ‘typical preachy vegan’. She wasn’t preaching, she just answered their questions.

Things got heated as my mother started shouting. I told her that she doesn’t get to shout at my daughter in our house about this, and that if they both don’t stop the comments they can leave and not bother coming for Xmas. My brother said our mum can say what she likes and that I owed my mum an apology for saying that. My daughter left the room. My son told my mum and brother that they were out of line and went to check on my daughter. My mum and brother left.

My brother text later on to say that when they come on Xmas day they don’t want to be seated by me or my daughter. I’ve not responded as I wanted to cool down before I did, but my husband has said to just uninvited them because they’re arseholes and he’s not risking them upsetting our daughter on Xmas day. My daughter says she isn’t bothered and thinks they’re idiots.

If I uninvite them, I think that will probably be the end of my relationships with them but I think that is possibly for the best. There have been lots of problems with them over the years and I think we may be happier without them. They have had issues with other aspects of our life, choices we’ve made, my husbands family (who are all lovely) who they see as ‘snobby’, so the vegan issue is just another thing. They are ok is small doses. My other siblings have low or no contact with them and although I invited them to dinner too, they won’t come because our mother and brother are coming.

They don't want to be seated next to the people who are hosting them? It sounds like it will be for the best to say in that case they are no longer invited.

Tell them to GTFU and uninvite them. You would expect that behaviour from primary school children but grown adults!

Good for you op! Curious as to whether or not you received a reply

@Livelovebehappy and @JoClogs please will you both stop projecting and making up your own narrative?

This is for the chips on your shoulders.

I don't have a chip - I moved up socially just like OP and had a mother who reacted the same way to my vegetarian fad when I was 17 myself.

Tell them you are making a vegan only Xmas dinner for all and let them uninvite themselves 😆

or message back saying no problem you won’t be sat by either of us you’ll be in a totally different house, don’t come, thanks and bye.

jokes aside, uninvite and let your other siblings know so they can come instead!

Unless they apologise, uninvite.

Not projecting at all. Just pointing out that while her mother and brother’s behaviour isn’t good, I’m wondering how OP comes across when they visit, because her comments on here do make it sound like she looks down on them.

Well, if people choose to lie in the gutter, one has little choice but to look down on them!

Honestly, posters will twist themselves into the most uncomfortable shapes to find a way to blame an OP 🤯

I guess we only know half the story on every single bloody thread on this forum - do you understand how forums like this work?

You read the OP and thought she was talking down to her mother? You thought her daughter was talking down? Is simple comprehension not taught any more?

I suspect "vegan" was triggering to a lot of posters who might love to make animal noises at vegans and think veganism is snobby.

He may do one day….. but not anytime soon while he’s seeing his mum get away with it! The disrespect shown to you and your daughter would be an absolute deal breaker for me! Not only their behavior in your home, but to demand not to be sat next to you or your daughter - I don’t actually know anyone who would be brave or stupid enough to even suggest that to me! THAT @WantToHibernate should be the final straw and time for you to literally shut the door on them and do not allow their toxicity back into your haven. If you don’t do it now, they’ll continue as they always have, because they get away with it. Put a stop to it and enjoy the family and friends that respect you and yours ❤️

I agree with the inferiority complex. I suspect if you don’t uninvite you will hugely regret it. Hope you have a lovely day 🌷

Her mum making animal noises reminded me of The Royles.
It made me chuckle because like OP I grew up in a working-class family where that kind of behaviour is considered funny (quelle horreur!).

Veganism is very much a middle-class fad - you won't find too many vegans in working-class areas and I also think it is unhealthy in the long-term or requires so much work to not end up with multiple vitamin deficiencies.

Also, I've met plenty of vegans over the years for whom it is a quasi religion.
Once, while abroad for a team-building event, 3 vegans out of a group of 25 colleagues imposed their religious food beliefs on the rest of us. We all had to eat at a vegan restaurant in Prague. The food was awful and I thought their approach was authoritarian.

Funnily enough, none of the vegans I know are anything like the ones you have met @JoClogs
They are polite and don't preach or try to convert people.

Or maybe they just don't realise how preachy they are.

So how did your text go down?

Apologies to you and your DD received and a peaceful Christmas all sorted?

100% she looks down on her mother and is embarrassed by her.

Unless and until they apologise, they should not come!

Yeah. Most of us would be embarrassed by a mother like that.

That's classism.

Working-class people do not follow the same social rules as the middle-classes and OP knows this. The middle-class look down on the working class, the upper-class look down on the middle-class and the aristocrats look down on everyone. The Two Ronnies did a sketch on this with John Cleese back in the sixties.

Expecting a working-class woman to behave as if she were middle-class is unfair at the very least. Standards go up with money.

There's a reason your siblings are low or non contact. What an unpleasant pair. Time to drop the rope and work through any feelings of fear, obligation and/or guilt around your relationship with them.

Oh stop it! Working class people know right from wrong just like any other class. It’s clearly wrong to insult, pick arguments with your GD and demand to not be seated anywhere near the GD or host after she cooks them a fabulous Christmas dinner.

No matter which class these relatives fall into, the OP and anyone else could do nothing else but look down on them for this appalling embarrassing behaviour. Definitely not the behaviour you’d want in front of a bigger audience on Christmas Day.

"Dis moi ce que tu manges je te dirai qui tu es" Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

https://www.bayes.citystgeorges.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2019/september/vegan-ethics-identity-class-ideology-thomas-robinson#:~:text=Vegans%20generally%20need%20to%20be,in%20the%20world%20of%20work.

What a total load of bollox (as my DM would say).

One of my DP's came from very working class NE family (miner's child) and the other DP came from, what was then called, an upper middle class family in the South. Tne WC side know exactly how 'to behave' and funnily enough many of them are vegetarians and have been for decades. Both sides have nice homes, it's just one side's houses are smaller than the other side. No-one is looking down on anyone, although I expect it was tricky when DP first got together towards the end of the 1950s.

That sketch came from The Frost Report and is almost 60 years old. It was funny but wouldn't be relevant today - although the UK still has class hang ups (and 'vegan' ones too apparently)

Does it say anywhere that OP does? Why would anyone assume that? Mum and brother have been incredibly rude