'AITA for refusing to go to a Christmas dinner because my family want it to be at 1 PM?'
"AITA for not attending Christmas dinner with my family because it’s at 1 o’clock in the afternoon?"
Stayssad writes:
For context, I buy the turkey at £130, dry brine it for two days, cook it, take it to my mum's house, and then cook all of the trimmings while I’m there. This involves many hours of work from me, as you can imagine, and I have to wake up at 7 AM to get all of the timings right.
The problem with this is that my partner and I barely get any time together on Christmas Day. We’d like to wake up, have a coffee, spend time together, open presents, maybe have a light breakfast, and then start cooking dinner at midday.
We don’t usually eat breakfast or lunch as we intermittent fast, and we’re never hungry for a giant plate of roasted food at 1 o’clock in the afternoon, effectively ruining the Christmas meal for us anyway.
When children were involved and everyone had to get home early, I compromised, even though I still didn’t really understand the whole eating-at-midday thing. But this year, now that the youngest child in attendance is 12, I tried to meet them in the middle and asked if we could maybe have it at 3.
I’ve been told that I’m selfish, that I don’t compromise, and that this is ridiculous. Thus, I’ve decided that my partner and I will go around to see the family in the afternoon but not eat dinner with them. We’ll have our own meal at home in the evening, saving me money and allowing us to have the Christmas morning we’ve not had since we first lived together in 2018.
Additionally, I’ll be able to experiment with flavors for once, sous vide a turkey crown, use the giblets for the gravy, etc. I also feel it necessary to add that everyone rushes off as soon as they’ve finished eating anyway.
There would usually be eight people in attendance, including us, and except for my mum and brother, everyone else leaves. I think it wouldn’t be so bad if we spent the day together after the meal.
Here are the top rated comments with OP's responses:
General_Relative2838 says:
NTA. It doesn’t sound like your family knows what the word compromise means.
OP responds:
The irony for them when it comes to “compromise” is that they’d rather not have us there than have it a couple hours later. We are supposed to compromise but they are not.
fiestafan73 says:
"You're not willing to compromise by doing EXACTLY what we want!" Your family sounds delightful for a holiday. Create a new holiday tradition for yourself. But also, who spends that much on a turkey?! NTA.
OP responded:
I’m a firm believer in buying organic local meat where possible, if an animal has died for me I think the least I could do is make sure it’s ran around a bit. We don’t live in a particularly cheap area but for a turkey of that size it’s pretty much the same across the country.