MIL has sent us a Christmas schedule

[TheChristmasSchedule2026]

MIL has decided that ‘enough is enough’ and she wants a faaaamily Christmas.

We said yes we will try to visit on Christmas Eve or Boxing Day if she lets us know which she prefers. We have now been sent a schedule which stretches from the 23-27 December.
Im working on 23 the whole day and AM on 24th. She will apparently amend the schedule to reflect that and I won’t have any ‘duties’ on 24 (she had put me down as helping prep veg)

She thinks dh and the dc can just travel up and I can go straight from work on Christmas Eve.

We are seeing her this weekend so dh has said he will explain to her that we won’t be doing this as we have our own plans and reiterate that she can pick Christmas Eve or Boxing Day for a visit , if it’s Christmas Eve it will just be dh and the dc though (but I don’t think that will bother her it’s more dh and the dc she would want to see).

She is generally very controlling but this is more so than usual! I did say to dh just check first that she isn’t unwell or anything but otherwise AIBU to stick to just one day !

Receiving an unsolicited schedule of events covering 5 days of the Christmas holidays isn’t “organising” - it’s a hijack.

Honestly, I just don't get these posts that willfully fail to understand the point of the OP. Do you really think 'oh that sounds nice and helpful' without considering that it might be intrusive and unwanted and the OP's family might want to have some say in their own holiday period?

So why can’t you spend Christmas Day with her? Or them with you?

'Really sorry, Mum, but that doesn't work for us.'

And then hope like hell that she's got some hobbies by this time next year.

I agree that she's been a bit OTT to create a schedule. But I don't understand why you can't see them on Christmas Day? Most families do spend Christmas Day together.

It’s pretty psycho to be told Christmas Eve or Boxing Day and then be sent a schedule spanning multiple days inc Christmas Day. (Who told her Christmas Eve or Boxing Day? Any chance this is a misunderstanding because DH was vague?)

Also I can’t imagine being sent a schedule with “duties” would make anyone want to come 😳

I’m a fiend for Christmas and have a detailed spreadsheet 😂 that covers all elements but wouldn’t dream of sending other people “duties” 🤦‍♂️

Is your husband an only child or are others involved in her plan?
Is she going to be on her own the rest of the time?
My mother was a teacher (and acting Head for some lengthy periods) and I can vouch for the fact that they never leave that part of themselves behind! We never had a Christmas in our own house and I used to feel very aggrieved about it, but at the distance I am from it all now, I can see, in the grand scheme, it doesn't really matter. It was diluted by every other year with my in laws, the least controlling people ever. Perhaps that saved our sanity.

Well what is her situation? Is FIL there too? Would she be own on Xmas day if you are all not there? Does she have other people staying? What is the context?

I just want to see the schedule. What's she got planned I wonder?

Please, please show the schedule. I could do with a good laugh!

Bit rich of her to usually be away but now she’s not you all have to toe the line with her full on plans. Leave it to DH and hopefully she’ll calm down when she realises he’s serious.

The schedule is unreasonable, especially as you have told her that it's a visit either on Christmas Eve or Boxing Day. Your husband needs to reiterate that she needs to choose, and no you won't be there for the entirety of Christmas.

I suspect she thinks railroading you all will work, so your husband needs to stand firm and let her see it won't.

Agreed.

Where on earth do you get 'resistant to spending time with' from?

It's the 5 day long schedule that's the problem. It's insane!

The context about her being a retired HT really explains a lot here, especially if she was a primary HT. There's so many festivities and lovely things planned in schools in those last weeks! I imagine she’s missing that and projecting her need to plan and organise things onto the rest of you. My MIL was similar the first Christmas after she retired from working in primary schools, it’s like she was trying to fill that gap with other things.

Have DH approach her gently and kindly, say you appreciate she’s just trying to make Christmas magical in her way but your plans are set and you’re (family, not personally) available on the 24th or 26th. Keep an eye on her going forward, my MIL’s health declined pretty rapidly once she retired (she’d always been fit and healthy up to that point) 🙁 It’s like when you finally take annual leave and end up ill, your body knows it can relax a bit and suddenly you get hit with anything and everything.

Ok so while she was working your inlaws established a precident of going on holiday elsewhere over the Christmas break and you and DH developed your own traditions for celebrating without them. Now this is the first Christmas since retirement so she's not constrained to school holidays for going away, and can have a winter break earlier in December, so would now like to adopt the martiarch role that she previously didn't have energy for having put all her energies into Headteachering.

I can understand that. Her biggest mistake was to try to dictate everything. @TheChristmasSchedule2026 if instead of this schedule she'd said something like "my biggest regret from my working life is that it left me so exhausted by the time the Christmas holidays arrived that I just had to focus on rest and recuperation so I feel I've missed out on a lot of Christmas festivities that I would have enjoyed. Now I'm retired I'd really like to start having the kind of big family gathering on Christmas Day that I never used to have energy for. Would that work for you?" Would you have cooperated with her to find a way to make her dream work, or would you have still wanted to stick with your own plans and just do a low key visit?

Obviously she didn't start from asking you like that, but I think this perspective could be helpful to working out whether to stick to your current offer or whether to try to compromise a bit.

I can, that’s a long time over Christmas, but I’m sure you already know that.

Someone needs to tell her that if she wants buy in for a plan, it is best to talk to people first, persuade, gauge views.
Not present them with a detailed schedule.
They really do need to explain this to her. And for her to understand that while she is merrily deciding there will be a family Christmas at the same time someone else might have equally been planning for a quiet one.

This is such a classic MN reaction of a certain ilk.

Send a controlling, unbending response to the "controlling one" then throw in an insult that they only want to see family because they "lack hobbies."

What sort of "hobby" stands in for seeing family at Christmas?

Could you not just spend this year with her and go back to normal next year? Retirement is a huge life transition and a big adjustment and like you say this may just be part of it. By next year she'll be more adjusted no doubt. I'd be inclined to go along with it as a one off.

Agree.

On all sides, people seem to talk so rudely now.

I can't imagine our family not just discussing it all normally.

Is she perhaps very ill but nobody realises?

It's not the 'seeing people at Christmas' that is the issue. It is the sending out of a schedule dictating what other people will do with THEIR time.

Nobody has the right to tell others how they should spend their time over such a long period. Make arrangements for Christmas day, fine. Specify how people who have a life of their own will spend the entire week - nope.

And plenty of us have said she needs hobbies. The MIL has just retired. She's trying to fill her time and this is not the way to do it.

So depressing that it’s still assumed the Christmas ‘load’ will be the woman’s…

Op YANBU. But why hasn’t she even considered that your plans with your own dc would take priority? Not hers? She sounds a bit main character syndrome. I think she needs to be told that ‘faaaamily’ requires a different set of management skills to a school.

This is exactly what I think.

The communication is odd, but equally I don't see why the OP feels it is so normal to say: "You get Christmas Eve or Boxing Day: either/or."