Most people feel that the holidays are a time to celebrate and to be with family and friends. It’s supposed to be a joyful time, but not everybody got that memo.
Sometimes, people are not the friendliest on the holiday and they may even use the holiday season to show just how ugly they can be. That includes some in this post, who showed their true stripes online.
These are not here to make you feel bad about the holidays but rather, they are to remind you just how happy they can be. Let’s keep this in mind as we enjoy sharing this time together year after year.
1.
2.
This letter is going “local viral” in my area. Santa’s wh*rehouse looking pretty classy if you ask me!
[Transcript of letter:] Why don’t you give our neighborhood a break. Haven’t you heard that less is more[?] Your house is the joke of the neighborhood. It looks more like Santa’s wh*rehouse or a Christmas abortion.
3.
4.
Every year, my husband [and I] receive a few Christmas cards from a few people. We used to get dozens, from good friends who would send thoughtfully chosen or carefully crafted cards. That’s dropped off over the years, and now we get (deep sigh) the photo cards.
I hate these smug, supercilious, patronizing, wasteful pieces of crap with the fury of a thousand suns…
These people might be thinking, “Let me share the joy I feel from having a beautiful vacation, successful and good-looking children, glamorous leisure activities, and disposable income with my friends at this festive time of year.” But that doesn’t translate on the other end. It lands in the recipient’s mailbox as, “Look how successful we are! We look like an advertisement on television! … Don’t you wish you were us? We’re rich, good-looking, healthy, neurotypical, relaxed, and idle! … Yay!”
…Last year, a friend (of over 40 years) sent my family one of these bogus pieces of bougie bullsh*t for the first time. The photo was probably one of the few moments when her family wasn’t fighting with each other. I figured her husband had these made up for his professional contacts, and they’d added my address to pad out the numbers, to get better bulk pricing. There was no good way to say it, but I texted her… saying, “I love you so much, but please take me off the photo card mailing list.”
The knock-down, drag out, name-calling [argument] was epic.
5.
I (F30) have a niece who is 13. Up until a week ago, she still believed in Santa. I asked her parents (my brother and SIL) if she was just pretending to still believe to not make them feel bad, or maybe to get more gifts or something, but they were adamant she still believed. Last Christmas Eve I was at their house for dinner, and she kept saying things like “I’m so excited for Santa to come tonight” and telling me everything she had asked him for and wondering what country he was in at that very moment. She doesn’t have any younger siblings, so it’s not like she was saying this for anybody else’s benefit. She is a smart girl, does well in school, and has no developmental delays that I know of. She just, for whatever reason, still believed in Santa at age 13.
Her parents didn’t seem to have an issue with it. They said they absolutely did not want to tell her the truth and “ruin the magic” of Christmas. Plus they said it was beneficial for them because believing in Santa would encourage her to “be good” in the hopes of getting better presents/not getting coal.
I love my niece a lot, and after agonizing over this for some time, I felt it might be necessary to tell her the truth, if her parents were refusing. I remember how brutal middle school girls can be. I mean, she had to be the only girl at her school who still believed in Santa. If it somehow got out that she still believed, and she got teased or bullied, that could be brutal and awful for her. Wasn’t it better to hear it from her aunt than some mean girl (or guy)?
So, a week ago, I told her the truth. I tried to do it in a gentle way, explaining that what Santa represents (the spirit of Christmas) is very real, but that there wasn’t actually a guy with flying reindeer going to every kid’s house in one night to deliver presents. She didn’t say much and got a bit teary eyed. But she did reach out to me a few days later and let me know that she appreciated me telling her the truth.
Her parents, however, are furious at me and not talking to me. I feel like I did the right thing, but I know it was against her parents’ wishes. AITA?
6.
My husband’s aunt mailed us back our Christmas card that we sent her and added this lovely note to the back of it…
[Transcript from photo:] Please don’t send me any more Christmas cards. You have been married 3 years and I still have never got a thank you card from both of you. I sent you $100.00, was not at your wedding, did not eat. If you think I’m the only one mad and upset with you think again. There is a lot of relatives upset. You two should be ashamed of yourselves. You couldn’t send a thank you card but have the nerve to send a christmas card. Stick it up your *ss.
We mailed her the thank you card that she wanted. It includes a $100 check with the memo “Stick it up your *ss”.. using her own words. She’ll still receive Christmas cards each year 🙂
7.
My husband’s family likes to drink. Every holiday includes multiple bottles of wine/cocktails. I hate drinking, I have never drank, my father was an alcoholic. I think it’s childish if you can’t have fun without drinking.
This year I’m hosting Christmas for a change. I decided since it’s at my house, no alcohol allowed. We are all getting older and it’s time to grow up.
My husband’s sister called to ask what she could bring. She saw a recipe for a Christmas martini that she wanted to bring. I told her about my no alcohol rule. She didn’t say much but must have told the rest of the family. Some of them started texting me asking me if I was serious and saying that it is lame. But I’m not budging.
Now it turns out my husband’s sister is hosting an alternate gathering that almost everyone is choosing to go to instead. It’s so disrespectful, all because they would have to spend one day sober.
My husband told me he talked to his sister and we are invited to her gathering and he said we should just go and stop causing issues but I won’t, it’s so rude.
Now husband is mad because I’m making him stay home and spend Christmas with me, but it was my turn to host and I chose to have no alcohol. They could have dealt with it for one year.
8.
Every year at this time, there’s this local radio station that starts playing Christmas music 24/7 and the one song that’s constantly overplayed is any variation of “Last Christmas.” I’ll never understand why anyone considers it a valid Christmas song. The song has the word “Christmas” in it, but that’s it. It doesn’t actually mention any of the festive Christmas stuff like gift-giving, putting up a tree, caroling, playing in the snow, and all of that fun stuff. It’s just someone whining about being dumped on Christmas and that’s it. You could replace the word “Christmas” with any other holiday like Halloween, Easter, or even Labor Day and it wouldn’t be any different. Saying that “Last Christmas” is a Christmas song because it contains the word “Christmas” in it is the equivalent of saying that Fellowship of the Ring is a Christmas movie because it has a scene with snow.
9.
Elf, the Christmas film, is try-hard, cringe, unenjoyable, and unfunny.
I like Will [Ferrell], I think he’s best served as a side character or in small doses, but this movie is not good…
…I wasn’t a small kid when this came out and never found it enjoyable in any way. I know campy, cornball films can be great – Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, Major Payne, I found hilarious… the Jim Carrey Grinch film – it was an hour and a half of him hamming it up… but Jim Carrey can get away with that… and 20 years later I can still think of a scene or line from the film that makes me laugh – Elf has no such “stand the test of time” moment…
When you have Will [Ferrell] and Vince Vaughn doing the Christmas movies, there’s still that frat pack vibe and “it’s for kids (but not really)”…
It’s a product of it’s time, which doesn’t say a [lot.]
10.
I (F27) have been with my boyfriend (33) for almost two years now. We will be getting married eventually but it’s not a priority.
My mom won’t let us share a bed if we come see them for any reason. When we came over this last summer my boyfriend suggested renting a hotel so we could have privacy and a comfortable bed. It drove my mom nuts that we bypassed her little rules. She wouldn’t drop it the entire time we were there. She made me promise not to do that again.
My boyfriend’s mom and dad are retired to Mexico and they are really chill. So we made plans to come visit them over Christmas. They are not Christian so they don’t really care when they see their son with regards to religious holidays.
We didn’t tell my parents we weren’t coming. My mom asked me at Thanksgiving if I was going to hold to my promise not to stay at a hotel over Christmas. I answered truthfully that I would not stay at a hotel.
I am sitting here on the balcony of my future in-laws condo looking at the Caribbean waiting for sunrise and enjoying the peace and quiet. I made the mistake of going online yesterday and I saw a bunch of posts from my mom and my sisters about how I was a jerk for lying to them about my plans.
I may have been a little tipsy last night because I decided to respond. I said that it was ridiculous of them to try and tell me I couldn’t share a room with my boyfriend, that I was keeping my promise by not staying at a hotel when we were there, and that if they planned on putting everything on Facebook I would be avoiding all visits for the foreseeable future.
They took down their posts when people started crapping on them for trying to control me. But some people did agree with them.
Now they are texting me and calling to say I was an *sshole for making them look bad. I asked them if they were trying to make me look good with their posts? They stopped for a while but there were more texts and voice mail this morning. I’m kind of liking the idea of skipping out on the drama from now on. But I miss my dad and he is blameless in this.
11.
…My family likes to play pranks with Christmas and birthday gifts it’s nothing new. I (f21) as well as my 5 siblings (from 29 to 37 years old) have all been pranked on our birthdays and on Christmas and usually it’s one or two gifts. This Christmas though, I was the only person to get all joke gifts. For example, I unwrapped a MacBook from my brother, but when I opened it, it was just some chocolate (which I don’t eat so I gave it away) and the MacBook was actually given to my sister inside a bag she wanted. Another “gift” was what I thought was a book I put on my Christmas list was actually just the book cover put on a dictionary. When I asked my mom about the book she told me she gave it to my [sister in law].
This went on with each present my siblings or parents had given me. AirPods was just a charger block? Adapter? gift cards were used and had $0 balance, a card with Monopoly money, and so on totaling to about 12 joke gifts. I realized I went out of my way to get everyone something they wanted or they’d like didn’t get anything. At this point I was bummed so I went to the living room to watch tv with my boyfriend. At dinner they were all talking about how much they loved their gifts and when my dad asked why I hadn’t said anything about mine, I said there wasn’t much to say. Everyone but my boyfriend laughed and my mom said it was no big deal as everyone else also got some joke gifts. I told her every gift I got was a joke gifts and that the ones they got was also followed by the real one. My dad told me I needed to relax as I’m making a big deal about it and I’d have next Christmas to get the stuff on my list.
