Ah, Thanksgiving.
A time to give thanks. A time for family.
Except if you are my in-laws.
Now, I know everyone has their own in-law horror stories. I know I'm not special. I know my in-laws are not even the worst-case scenario.
But holidays... oh boy, holidays.
Let me back up.
Halloween. 2017. For five years, our sleepy little town of less than 600 people has scheduled its annual trick-or-treat for the final Saturday in October. I'm sure it's been going on longer than that - it's just that we only moved in five years ago. And every year, my in-laws have joined us. This includes my husband's parents, as well as his sister's family, which includes her son, who is only eight months older than our oldest. My own parents and one of my brothers and his family have also joined us on occasion.
About two years ago, I vowed that I would no longer host celebrations at my house. 1200 sq. ft. doesn't go very far when you have to eliminate three bedrooms (two of which are a stretch of the word), two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a laundry room as potential space in which company can gather. We lead busy lives, and my mother-in-law is the type that will check the top of your shower curtain rod to see if it's been recently cleaned. (Hint: I didn't know people cleaned the tops of their shower curtain rods).
Last year, we still had people over for trick-or-treat, but it was rough on me with an additional ten people in my home. Luckily, this particular holiday mostly takes place outside. I still had to have a clean house and arrange for people to eat. This was after spending the afternoon helping out at an auction at my grandmother's farm (she had passed away earlier that spring) approximately an hour east of our house.
This year, I planned for Halloween pretty minimally. It has always been my favorite holiday, but I just don't have the time or energy to really celebrate it the way I'd like anymore. We put out a few decorations, carved a few pumpkins, and that was pretty much the extent of our acknowledgments of the holiday.
I didn't go out of my way to mention trick-or-treat to anyone this year. I bought my kids costumes, and figured if anybody wanted to come, they'd let us know.
I feel it necessary to point out at this time that the town my sister-in-law lives in, the county seat of about 41,000 people, has always had trick-or-treat on the last Thursday of the month. This is only 10 miles north of us. We've gone with them once or twice, but my sister-in-law's family has never lived in the same house for more than eight months at a time, so depending on their location trick-or-treat is not always an option.
Remember, way back up six paragraphs ago, I mentioned that trick-or-treat for us was on a Saturday. On Tuesday, my mother-in-law contacted us asking what was going on for trick-or-treat. We told her it was on Saturday and gave her the time.
This unleashed an absolute torrent of scathing hatred. Why hadn't we given her more notice? (Internal question: why did you wait until Tuesday to ask if it was already too late?). We agreed, she said, at the campground (so sometime in August) to do Halloween together. Apparently we planned it. This is not the first instance of referencing a casual and forgotten conversation, not bringing it up again for months, then getting angry when the day rolled around and other plans had been made. Look for my upcoming blog "Why I Hate Memorial Day."
I have no memory of this conversation. At best, the only conversation may have revolved around, "we should get together around Halloween" followed by a "sounds good." It was then NEVER BROUGHT UP AGAIN until this fateful Tuesday.
This is for fucking Halloween.
Remember, my sister-in-law's trick-or-treat was on Thursday. My mother-in-law was staying with her. It was Tuesday. We had not been invited to their trick-or-treat.
But nobody mentioned that.
My husband chose this holiday as the hill to die on, and the fight got pretty nasty, especially when we dared to celebrate my youngest brother's birthday by visiting him out of town the weekend before.
Ultimately, Halloween passed and we saw neither hide nor hair of my in-laws, and it hasn't come up again (not to our faces, anyway).
Now it is Thanksgiving.
Wow, that was a long tangent. But it was necessary to set up even a fraction of the emphasis my husband's family puts on holidays, and how loose their definition of a "plan" is.
Thanksgiving is different. We've had a room reserved at a local school since last Thanksgiving. The time and date has been set 365 days in advance. You know, actual plans.
A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from my husband's grandmother. It is unusual for her to call me, and we don't get along very well (she's my mother-in-law's mother; I get along much better with my father-in-law's family). I actually wouldn't have answered her call, but my toddler was playing with my phone and answered it and put it on speaker phone before handing it to me.
The conversation went something like this:
Her: Are you coming to Thanksgiving?
Me: (confused) Yes, why wouldn't I?
Her: Would you like to host it?
Me: You sneaky bitch.
Okay, I didn't say that last part. But I thought it. The conversation continued.
Me: What happened to Gothel and Grimm (my in-law's pseudonyms for this blog)?
Her: They're going south (as in...800 miles south) to visit an old friend who is sick.
Let me insert to say two things. First of all, this is a completely legitimate reason for skipping Thanksgiving, and I have no objection to it. Second of all, back in the Indian summer days of September, my parents had gone camping with my in-laws. My mom had told me that Gothel and Grimm were going south instead of coming to Thanksgiving. I told her she was crazy. A month passed, and it never came up. Surely, I thought, my holiday-obsessed in-laws would not fail to mention that they were skipping a holiday as important as Thanksgiving?
My husband's birthday fell on Friday the 13th of October this year. We went out to a steakhouse with his family for his birthday. I had already received the phone call from his grandmother at least a week before this, and nobody had brought it up. So, me being me, I did. The look on my mother-in-law's face was priceless. Pure guilt. Then laughter. And she confirmed that they were considering it. My sister-in-law took this time to mention that they might also be headed south to her husband's hometown (about 700 miles away). So somehow, I was to host a Thanksgiving that seemed to largely consist of my husband's grandmother's friends and a few great-aunts and second-cousins. I was less than pleased, but rolled with it. My own mother was (is) having surgery the day before Thanksgiving, and I was having a "Thanksibling" with my brothers that Friday, so I wasn't too worried about Thanksgiving Day itself.
Fast-forward to my son's birthday party, November 11. My mother-in-law and her mother-in-law got in a fight bad enough that my own mom and aunt made a coffee run just to escape the awkwardness while the kids swam. I missed it, but my mom filled me in, and my husband (who had been swimming) filled me in on his mother's version of the story later. Essentially, his grandmother had recently moved out of her home of 40+ years into a condo, and was upset that people had not been visiting her. There's more to that story as well, and you can look forward to my future blog, "WTF is Wrong with my Husband's Family?"
A few days later, my husband came home and told me that Thanksgiving was cancelled because everybody backed out, and they were cancelling their reservation at the school. He also told me that his family didn't want to include his grandmother. I asked who had cancelled, and it turned out to be one great-aunt and her family, and... that was it, as far as I could tell. He then proceeded to tell me that his parents and sister were not going south, and that they wanted to reschedule Thanksgiving.
These are not sneaky people. They cancelled Thanksgiving and rescheduled it in order to exclude his grandmother.
Very thankful.
These are the same "Christians" who didn't want their son to marry me because I was Catholic.
Look forward to that blog as well. It'll be called "Disowned on Easter."
Now they wanted to go out to eat. I told my husband I didn't care, but I prefer not to for a number of reasons. One, it costs a lot of money, and we already had the turkey. Two, we have a toddler that is an absolute nightmare at restaurants. We never go anymore if we can help it. Three, we don't like to patronize places that require their employees to work on Thanksgiving. This is not new. I don't even celebrate Black Friday, but that is a combination of a natural distaste for shopping and a cringe response from years of working in retail.
They suggested going to their house, 100 miles south of literally everyone else. Again, I told my husband I didn't care, but I had to be able to be home in time to cook for my own family's "Thanksibling."
You don't get to cancel Thanksgiving two weeks before the holiday and expect me to reschedule two other families' Thanksgivings as well to accommodate you.
I said I would cook the turkey. They said they'd eat the turkey at Christmas, and they wanted a taco bar.
Fuck you. I'm eating the turkey next week out of spite at this point. Buy your own turkey for Christmas.
I pointed out they had a perfectly good reservation at the school they could still use so it didn't have to be at anyone's house. I understand the hypocrisy of saying I don't want to go out, but also not offering my own house. But his sister and his other grandmother (the one I don't get along with and that was still being included) have houses with plenty of space, that we routinely have family gatherings consisting of these exact people in. In total honesty, the grandmother that was being excluded still owns her house, which is even bigger, as well, and it's just sitting there empty.
Today, sparking this blog because I have no one to vent to, we got a text telling us his sister was hosting Thanksgiving, but we had better be happy because we are requiring them to clean and host and go through all the stresses that entails.
NO SHIT GOTHEL. MAYBE YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE FUCKING CANCELLED THANKSGIVING AT THE LAST MINUTE.
I asked about the turkey. They said turkey in the early afternoon, then games, then taco bar later.
After all this, my husband rolls his eyes and gets mad at me when I tell him I'm not doing two meals with his family, because I still have to cook for the next day.
I fully plan on picking up the pariah grandmother and bringing her to Thanksgiving with us.
I hate Thanksgiving.
