Woman angry after husband demands she change 'weird' Christmas decorations.
When this mom is concerned about her new husband's, she asks Reddit:
"AITA for not wanting to get a new tree topper?"
I’m a black mother of two 12 year old twins and I remarried my husband in the summer so it’s our first Christmas together. It is important that my husband and his son are Caucasian.
Anyway I was putting up our Christmas tree and decorations because it’s time and it’s the last Sunday before the kids get swamped with finals and we like to do it together.
I asked my husband and stepson if they’d like to join and they said yes. Now as we’re putting stuff up my husband starts making commentary on how everything is black. I have little black nutcracker ornaments and statues and we have a little Christmas village full of black people.
I shrugged it off and we kept going until it was time to bring out the angel tree topper. It was a black angel and my husband stopped me and pulled me to the kitchen.
He said we couldn’t have all these “black” decorations when we were now a mixed family and that we had to go and get some regular nutcrackers and people for the village as well as a regular tree topper. This is where I might come off cold but I said no. No discussion, just no.
I told him that if we ever left this house, him and his kids would get to see regular decorations and tree toppers and Santa and all that stuff outside but my kids wouldn’t get the same and the least they deserved was to walk into their house and see decorations that looked like them.
Plus it took me a really long time to find all my decorations and I was going to give them to my kids when they moved out. So no. He said I was being selfish and unwelcoming and that it wasn’t fair for his son to have to leave the house to feel like he belonged.
I told him it wasn’t the same and he asked me to explain how but I wasn’t in the mood to have such a heavy discussion so I just shook my head and told him to read a book.
My step son is 10. We spent Christmas together but never at my house because I usually spend it with my family. My kids and I did Christmas at my moms and then I would go be with him that night.
I’m hosting Christmas this year because my mom says I’m finally married again and so it’s my turn. He didn’t have any decorations at his apartment and when I asked he said he just wasn’t a big decorations guy.
Also yes he did say “regular” that wasn’t inferred. That word is straight from his lips to this post.
Also when he said “we need to go out and get regular decorations” I don’t know if he meant as replacements or as a add on but I took it to mean “as a replacement” to make his son more comfortable which is why I shut it down immediately.
I don’t know, was I too harsh? Should I go get some non black decorations? Will this really affect my stepson negatively? I don’t want him to feel like he doesn’t belong but I don’t think that’s even possible. AITA?
Let's find out.
dangerousdis writes:
The entirety of society includes/is mainly white beings relating to Christmas. You don't see many books with a BIPOC Santa, I've only seen black angels a couple times, every angle topper I've seen is white, hell... we even depict Jesus like a very pasty white dude when he was middle Eastern!
I've seen 1 black wise man as a bit fo a staple in nativity scenes over the years but the reality is none or fee of these people would have been white.
I don't think you truly get how damaging and messed up it is to say white, straight, able bodied, etc things are 'regular' or 'normal.' It's continuing to other and put down marginalized groups who have dealt with way too much hateful nonsense (to put it extremely mildly) through the years.
The husband didn't care about his kids having white Xmas decorations at home until there were black ones.
I absolutely hate the argument that because a marginalized group is preferentially represented (or represented at all) in 1 situation that it makes it unfair for the group who is default prioritized in almost every other.
I'm white, I won't ever know what racism feels like. I did grew up not feeling like I belonged or was wanted for other reasons. I end up fighting back tears when I see better representation in certain situations, even if it relates to something that isn't part of my identify...
because it makes my heart so damn happy that more kids will feel like they belong and they're not less than for being who they are.
The step kids can literally just turn on the TV/streaming services to almost any Christmas show/movie and see mainly white people. I think I've seen 2 instances of a black Santa on tv/in movies. You might see 1 black wise man in a nativity and the rest of the nativity (of supposedly middle eastern people) is very white.
etainangel writes:
EVERYTHING is representative for OP's husband and stepson. Movies, books, magazines, computer games, guaranteed almost every single one will have white males.
I get that this is now their home but if they can't handle not being represented in Christmas decorations for longer than an hour, that they had to go to the store RIGHT AWAY to rectify this injustice, they probably don't deserve to be living in a predominately Black household.\
That OP's husband felt so strongly about the lack of representation was an opportunity for him to sit with those feelings and realise how much he took that representation for granted or how much it means. And it could have been an excellent teaching moment for his son.