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Anonymous wrote:What a terrible lesson to teach her children. Keeping up with the joneses and materialism and bragging rights is more important than family.

How is any of it about bragging rights or materialism? I don’t get it.

Luxury travel at the most expensive time of the year isn’t materialism?

Not all travel is “luxury”. We know several families who travel over Christmas break instead of giving gifts (to immediate family/ kids). We’ve never done this but have always admired the idea actually.

DP. Because they would have spent $25,000 on gifts otherwise? I don’t care where people go or when, but these are not equivalents.

Yes, all vacations cost 25K 🤣🤣

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Anonymous wrote:What a terrible lesson to teach her children. Keeping up with the joneses and materialism and bragging rights is more important than family.

How is any of it about bragging rights or materialism? I don’t get it.

Luxury travel at the most expensive time of the year isn’t materialism?

Not all travel is “luxury”. We know several families who travel over Christmas break instead of giving gifts (to immediate family/ kids). We’ve never done this but have always admired the idea actually.

DP. Because they would have spent $25,000 on gifts otherwise? I don’t care where people go or when, but these are not equivalents.

What argument are you even trying to make, cheap-o?

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Anonymous wrote:What a terrible lesson to teach her children. Keeping up with the joneses and materialism and bragging rights is more important than family.

How is any of it about bragging rights or materialism? I don’t get it.

Luxury travel at the most expensive time of the year isn’t materialism?

Not all travel is “luxury”. We know several families who travel over Christmas break instead of giving gifts (to immediate family/ kids). We’ve never done this but have always admired the idea actually.

DP. Because they would have spent $25,000 on gifts otherwise? I don’t care where people go or when, but these are not equivalents.

Has OP even come back in the last 10 pages?

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Anonymous wrote:What a terrible lesson to teach her children. Keeping up with the joneses and materialism and bragging rights is more important than family.

How is any of it about bragging rights or materialism? I don’t get it.

Luxury travel at the most expensive time of the year isn’t materialism?

Not all travel is “luxury”. We know several families who travel over Christmas break instead of giving gifts (to immediate family/ kids). We’ve never done this but have always admired the idea actually.

When you travel this time of year, it costs 50-100% more than the normal price, so by definition a luxury. We are big on travel but never travel this week because it would eat up most of our budget for the year. We’d rather take 2-3 week long trips at other times.

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Anonymous wrote:What a terrible lesson to teach her children. Keeping up with the joneses and materialism and bragging rights is more important than family.

How is any of it about bragging rights or materialism? I don’t get it.

Luxury travel at the most expensive time of the year isn’t materialism?

Not all travel is “luxury”. We know several families who travel over Christmas break instead of giving gifts (to immediate family/ kids). We’ve never done this but have always admired the idea actually.

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Anonymous wrote:What a terrible lesson to teach her children. Keeping up with the joneses and materialism and bragging rights is more important than family.

How is any of it about bragging rights or materialism? I don’t get it.

Luxury travel at the most expensive time of the year isn’t materialism?

Let it happen, and see. An announcement was made. It hasn't happened it. There may turn out to be some togetherness. Especially since expectations for less have now been established. Let this play out before you/Mom get emotional/critical.

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Anonymous wrote:Why is it a huge deal if they visit with your mother on a day that is not exactly Dec 24-25?

We already did Christmas Eve Eve this year for them. Christmas Eve has been the tradition for 20 years. And even with Eve, they would leave early to go be with her family. This year they wanted to do Eve Eve and now next year they don’t want to do anything with the rest of us. But specifically sad for our mom who is slowing down, as it’s the only time she gets to see ALL of us and all the grandkids together.

Is your mom sad? If so, why doesn’t she talk to her son about it?

Anonymous wrote:What a terrible lesson to teach her children. Keeping up with the joneses and materialism and bragging rights is more important than family.

How is any of it about bragging rights or materialism? I don’t get it.

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Anonymous wrote:What a terrible lesson to teach her children. Keeping up with the joneses and materialism and bragging rights is more important than family.

What a terrible lesson it would be to teach her children to give in to whims of controlling people when they are behaving selfishly. She is teaching them how to stand up for themselves.

Inviting someone to Christmas is behaving selfishly? Welcome to planet DCUM.

An invitation is nice. Pouting and whining and gossiping on DCUM when someone dares not to accept your family’s invitation is immature and reveals your desire to control. Welcome to the real world.

PP said it would be a terrible lesson to give in to people behaving selfishly. How would SIL and her kids know what has been posted here (after the fact). It is bizarre how posters get bent out of shape at the idea a grandmother is upset she won't be seeing her grandchildren on Christmas anymore. Anywhere else (except reddit) people would be reacting like humans.

OP’s desire to control and her seething with jealousy over SIL’s wealth and her close ties to her own family no doubt carry over into real life. No doubt SIL, OP’s brother and their kids have all picked up on SIL’s resentment, bitterness, jealousy, and my-way-or-the-highway attitude. OP’s brother clearly doesn’t care about having a relationship with his sister, and no wonder. She’s a pill.

Maybe I missed it but why the assumption SIL is wealthy or wealthier than OP?

Op's disdainful reference to the private school culture.

I am a private school parent and an element of private school culture is a lot of travel, vacation homes, and cliquish families taking trips as a big group. There is an undercurrent of pressure to participate and (keep up with the Joneses).

DP here. As much as I am sometimes tempted to move my kids to private school, the above is the reason I won't do it.

Ehh, my kids public school has this as well. It is not limited to private schools, it is everywhere. And you don’t have to participate.

+1. Abandoning your family and traditions so you can have social media travel content makes you an insecure freakin' loser.

Nah, I didn't even like my family traditions. It would make me a loser to continue to participate in something I don't like year after year instead of carving my own path with something I do like. I'm team SIL. My family gets together for craziness every Christmas and I take my kids skiing with my husband. I prefer it and think my kids do too! Sure it bothers my family, but they don't listen to what I want to do when I'm with them, so I go my own way now.

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Anonymous wrote:This seems so overblown by everyone. SIL had no idea what she will really do for the next 10 years. She could have just mentioned “we may travel next year.” Grandma can see the kids at other times. You can do Xmas on a different day.

This is sort of funny to me, because I just told my MIL on Xmas day that we will be traveling for Easter so I plan to host Easter at our house the weekend before. I wonder if some family member is posting about how horrible I am?? I doubt it, because none of us are wackadoodle.

The op was explicit that SIL said this was the last Christmas because they would be vacationing next year and in the future moving for are. I’m not sure why people are inventing other conversations when that’s what the op is reporting was said. She was the one who was actually there.

Yes, I’m saying SIL made this overblown assuming an accurate narrator. SIL could have dialed back the dramatics, because she has no idea what might happen. But I also think OP is making this overblown as well. Grandma has lots of ways to see her grandkids.

And they have 364 days out of the year to take vacations. Grandma does not actually have lots of ways to see all of her kids and grandkids together. She has literally one time of year that happens. Christmas or Christmas Eve. That’s it. And maybe Christmas doesn’t mean anything to you non-Christians but it means a great deal to my devout mother.

And? Your mother doesn’t get to run the entire family, just because she’s old and devout. She’s not the Queen if England.

Only on DCUM is inviting your children for Christmas "running the entire family." Especially when the family already accommodated by celebrating on December 23 so SIL could have both Christmas Eve and Day with her family.

An invitation is something that you can accept or decline. This is a demand.

Where is the demand? The post said the SIL announced they would be going on vacation next year and for the foreseeable future and that her mother was very sad.

Exactly. There are a bunch of dysfunctional people from dysfunctional families projecting their own BS on to OP.

But then again, that's DCUM for you. I don't know why anyone bothers to post. It's always a contest to see who can twist OPs post the most and project all kinds of crazy assumptions on OP to make them the "bad guy".

Lord. Pot meet kettle.

Anonymous wrote:It’s the American dream. Individualization. It’s all about you. Never give a shit about anyone else. Do what you want when you want and be as self centered as you can be. Leave everyone else to look after themselves.

I agree. Op and her mother couldn't give a rat's behind about anyone else. It has to be their way, which they've had for at least 20 years according to op. They really should be embarrassed by how rigid and selfish they are. It's clear op loves drama and dislikes her sil. People like her hate it when they don't have their object of scorn around to feed their judgement and derision.

Anonymous wrote:If SIL had announced after the holiday, Op, Siblings and Mother would be gossiping about -the why/and what happened, why is SIL mad.

+1. “And she didn’t even tell us beforehand! We didn’t know this would be the last time, otherwise we would have made those gingernaps we were talking about. If only we had known! …”

If SIL had announced after the holiday, Op, Siblings and Mother would be gossiping about -the why/and what happened, why is SIL mad.