MIL has stolen my childhood christmas decorations!

[ExhaustedPigeon37]

Hello all,

Bit of a strange one but I think my MIL has stolen my Christmas Decorations!!

They have been in my family since I was small and although they aren’t expensive, nothing special they are just sentimental to me.

We had these three decorations, saying Joy, Noel and Ho Ho Ho with a Santa head on the top. The letters cascade downwards and the Santa has a loop so that you can hang them up. This year I put our decorations up and only found the Joy one. Asked DH and he said he hadn’t seen them, so I only put the Joy one up thinking I’d come across them in another box, I never did.

Fast forward to yesterday when we went over to theirs and they live about an hour away so we stayed for dinner and catch up after DH finished work. MIL was showing us her new decorations and the tree (which is themed red and white). I happened to glance at the bottom of the tree where I saw THE/MY Noel and Ho Ho Ho decorations hanging off of her tree!!! I’ve never seen these decorations at their house before, so the only conclusion I can come to is that they are mine, which is why I couldn’t find them this year!

Asked DH and he said he didn’t notice, asked if he remembers us giving them to her or anything and he said can’t at all. Last year we moved house in

I’m so shocked. What do I do? Do I ask for them back? Do I just leave it? Do I sneak them out when we next go there? DH wanted to stay at home on Boxing Day but I now want to go there to retrieve my decorations (they have been invited on Christmas Day but declined due to the journey and FIL recently having had a knee replacement).

If you knew that you were missing two out of the three and then went to MIL’s and saw two that were identical to your missing ones, why on earth didn’t you say something there and then? The lack of communication always baffles me on here!
And if she ‘stole’ two of your decorations, why wouldn’t she have taken the whole set?
Just speak to the woman, or get your husband to surely?

Could one of the kids have kind of gifted her them by accident around the time of the house move? You know like a ‘this is for u grandma’ and as it’s just decorations she’s not asked you. I know my daughter loves giving gifts and would give anyone anything if I didn’t stop her 😂 I think I’d just say this sounds really odd but I’ve lost these exact decorations from our house this year they were from my childhood and see what she says x

I’d probably just ask the ILs about it-I would imagine there is a simple explanation.

If you’re married then they’re now family
property!

Firstly I have never said I don’t care about the MH of my MIL. I’ve mentioned one thing that DH noticed last night during a conversation about names. We have never noticed anything else before, FIL hasn’t noticed anything and neither has SIL who is at their house and sees them a lot more than us as we live an hour away she lives 5 min walk away! Please do not suggest we do not care about our family as they are very dear to us.

The decorations are childhood memories, in fact I’ve just had my mum and nan round my house for a cuppa and asked about the decorations, they confirmed they bought them in the Harrods sale in the 90s, they also confirmed that there was a HoHoHo one and Noel one. They are sentimental to me as they were my mums and now they are mine, my daughter also tells me she likes them and I’d like to hand them down, if she still likes them, in a few years time when she has her own house. I do recognise them which is why I know they are mine, I recognised them straight away!

If this was a sitcom just as you were about to steal it back someone would appear in the room and you would end up knocking over the entire Christmas treee, causing chaos. You would use this to retrieve the decoration. You'd get home and proudly put the decoration where it belongs only to have the cat walk in with your original decoration.

Do you have photos from previous years of your tree with the decorations on?

Go to visit MIL on your own. Show her photos. Explain how much they mean to you. Buy her something similar.

🤔 good point, I don’t know actually. I just couldn’t see it being him 🤷‍♀️ actually I couldn’t see it being MIL either. Then I saw the decorations on their tree and knew instantly these were my missing ones!

I would ask her. Tell her you can’t find yours and ask her where she bought hers from. You will know from her reaction if she stole them

Did your DH give them to her? She might have mentioned them to him and he could’ve just gone and got them and given them to her.

I showed dp this post he said 'tell her steal them back!!' 🤣

Any chance they’ve dropped off your tree in to her gift bag on Xmas day last year?

I recon DH gave them during your move and forgot he’d done it not realising they were important. Ask him again.

I found these on ebay: the first couple are from a UK seller & the trio are in America. Love the Santa + teddy!

These sorts of threads are monumentally irritating, literally any solution other than, I dunno, actually talking to your in laws eh? Got to keep the drama going! 🙄

If this was on tv, my money would be on the husband doing it to mess with the wifes head and discredit his mother, who knows the full circumstances of how he came to leave his first two families.

I mean are those exact decorations even on sale anymore? I don’t mean something generic, I mean the identical item? If not, then it’s clear the missing ones are the ones in her house. I also don’t think you need to do anything about this, your husband needs to sort it out.

But these aren’t the exact same ones as shown in the OP. The holly on the “joy” is in different locations. The shape & colours of the Santa head are totally different.

She wasn't around much last Christmas when they visited though.

Take them back and take others with them, give her the extra ones wrapped up as a gift.

The cheek of her.

Don't understand why people think the dcs or dh would've given them to her though??

If they were from Harrods, is there any branding on them? Can you check? Just in case she hasn't copied them but really it does sound like she nicked them.

You could say something like "I had some decorations like this as a child and have gone and lost them! I have been looking everywhere to get them replaced, can you tell me where you got them and I will see if the store has any left" Her reaction should say it all, Not sure what you would do with the info afterwards though unless you can handle it getting awkward

I can't imagine mil will do this on purpose, because anyone in their right mind would know that hanging stolen goods on the tree is an obvious way to get caught out ..if you steal something you hide it away ,you don't display it under the victims nose .
I'd be assuming mil is starting with dementia..you need to get your DH on board and you need to be looking for signs,she may need a doctor appointment.
But as for the decorations,just take them back ..if anyone says anything,just give a breezily ,oh we must of got our decorations mixed up last year ..
Hope mil is ok x

This! There is no possible way that anything could have happened other than her stealing them.

I would not want her in my house in the future.

Definitely mark them. I did that with a friend who was stealing makeup and other stuff from me
when she went to the bathroom I went in her makeup bag and found a load of my stuff with the marks on it