When it’s holiday season and your family are, well, less than close, it can get in your head a little.

What if the gifts aren’t good enough? What about what you wear, or do, or say?

In a good family, all these things would be excused in the interests of peace and togetherness. In a family like the one in this story, however, it is another matter altogether.

Read on to find out how a simple dessert caused a monumental Thanksgiving implosion.

AITA for leaving in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner because of pumpkin pie?

I am 32 and my mother is 60. She hosts Thanksgiving dinner at her house every year.

It’s a small event, with my parents, me, my brother’s family, and my sister-in-law’s family attending. We avoid family quarrels by implementing a strict “no politics” rule and trying our best to be civil.

I should probably mention that we are not a particularly close-knit family. We rarely see each other beyond these events, since my brother lives in South Africa and I travel a lot due to my work.

Thanksgiving is important to my mom since it’s one of the rare times we’re all together.

Read on to find out where the real issues began.

Anyway, the main problem I have with my mother is her constant critique of me. She has a habit of making passive-aggressive comments about my life choices, from my career to my lack of children to the way I dress.

I’ve addressed this with her multiple times, but she doesn’t really seem aware of it.

My father claims it is just her way of fussing and expressing that she cares. It does hurt though, because my brother is never criticised in the same manner.

I cannot entirely fault her for her criticism, since I did majorly mess up my life a few months ago (depression) and it has affected her opinion of me negatively.

It does not excuse the way I acted, but I just wanted to explain why I left. By the time we finished dinner, I was a bit prickly because of some of her commentary.

It’s about to get juicy!

I made a cake for dessert. I was explicitly put in charge of it and no one specified what exactly I should make, so I opted for Maple Cheesecake. I did my best and I think it looked okay.

Mum normally makes pumpkin pie, but I really hate pumpkins (they make me gag), so I thought perhaps we could try something new.

As I was bringing out the cheesecake, my mom eyed it somewhat warily and announced that she’d decided to make the usual pie as well.

This caught me off guard.

I asked why she didn’t tell me beforehand, and she said something like, “Well, we figured you’d do your own thing, so I thought it was best to have a backup.”

She went on to cut the pie and serve it to everyone, instructing me to leave the cheesecake in the kitchen.

Her mother wouldn’t even let anyone try the cheesecake.

When someone asked to try my dessert, she said “let’s not mix too many flavors at once,” which just felt passive-aggressive.

I know it’s immature for an adult to get this upset over a triviality, but I just (politely) refused as she was handing me a slice of pie, retrieved my coat and left.

People were calling after me I think, but by that point I was crying for some reason and it would have been too humiliating to have an emotional outburst in front of everyone for no real reason.

Everyone is blaming her for ruining Thanksgiving.

My mom just texted me saying that it was incredibly rude and immature of me to leave like that, especially on Thanksgiving.

My brother also sent me a message saying Im acting irrationally.

I feel horrible for leaving so abruptly, especially because my parents are getting older and we are already not close. Something about my mother seems to turn me into a neurotic teenager and I hate it.

AITA?

I mean, I would totally prefer maple cheesecake to pumpkin pie, but that’s just me.

It’s totally unacceptable for this woman’s mother to treat her this way, and then to make out like she is the problem.

Let’s see how folks on Reddit reacted to this one.

This person called out not only the Mum, but the other family members for being complicit.

While this commenter encouraged her to be kinder to herself and her mental health.

And others encouraged her to make her own plans next time.

This mother is completely out of line, and her family shouldn’t be defending her.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.