Every family that celebrates the holidays together likely has their own type of traditions. They might not be the same as yours, and might even seem odd, but on the whole are likely harmless.
I mean, that’s probably what this lady thought before showing up.
OP’s fiance had warned her of an odd family thing before she spent her first Christmas with his family.
This year, I celebrated Christmas with my fiancé’s family for the first time.
Before we went to my fiancé’s parent’s house, my fiancé warned me that his parents usually come short in the amount of food they cook for Christmas dinner and that there’s often not enough for everyone.
He did not warn her, however, that his family would be asking for her underwear.
What I didn’t expect though was to be expected to participate in the family’s weird tradition.
Apparently they have a longstanding tradition where instead of drawing straws, they’ll throw all their underwear in a bin and then go act take turns wearing a blindfold and drawing a pair of underwear from the pile, and drawing the smallest pair of underwear correlates to drawing the smallest straw.
I had never heard of this tradition, so I felt blindsided when right before Christmas dinner.
My fiancé’s mom yelled out that it was time to « pull the straws » to decide the order of who got to plate up their food first in case there wasn’t enough for everyone.
She tried to politely decline.
At first I thought the family was joking when they announced this, so I laughed, which made my fiancé get real defensive.
I volunteered to get my food last, so I wouldn’t have to participate, but my fiancé just got more annoyed and asked me to just try to be a bit more agreeable.
The whole thing was just kind of weirding me out, so I called an Uber and went home.
Now things are real tense between me and my fiancé since he now says I made a bad impression by acting like I was too good for their family tradition. Aita?
Her fiance thinks she embarrassed him but honestly? I think it’s the other way around.
Does Reddit agree?
The top comment has some very understandable issues.
None of this would inspire people to want to eat anyway.
Could it have been some kind of weird test?
This is actually a sensible suggestion.
In fact, this is one of the worst “traditions” people could imagine.
I could honestly not believe what I was reading.
It’s so strange it has to be real.
If you thought that was an interesting read, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.