They say it’s better to give than receive, and there is a lot of truth to that. However, gift giving at Christmas time can be pretty stressful if money is tight or there are a lot of people to shop for.

If you had a sibling who had a lot of kids, would you be willing to buy an expensive Christmas present for each one of your nieces and nephews?

In this story, one person is in this exact situation, and he thinks it’s better to get one big gift all the siblings can share. However, his sister disagrees.

Let’s read the whole story.

AITA for not giving individual Christmas gifts to my sister’s kids?

To start off, my sister and I are not close. Nothing happened, I don’t think she’s a terrible person. We are just two very, very different people and live very separate lives.

We text each other on birthdays, and call each other once around the holidays and that’s it.

We live thousands of miles away from each other and it’s been about 8 years since I’ve seen her and her family in person.

They live very different lives.

I don’t have kids, while my sister has always dreamed of a huge family, and she got her wish. Between her and her husband, they have 9 kids between the ages of 2 and 16.

After my sister and her husband got married and the head count reached over 4, I decided to just start getting something for all the kids to share on Christmas.

Some years it’s been something for all of them to do, some years it’s been something like a gaming system. I figured it was probably nicer to get one expensive gift that they probably wouldn’t have gotten rather than 9 cheaper ones.

My sister’s never said anything about it, although I don’t know how she really feels about this.

Her sister had a request.

A week back I got a surprise call from my sister. She said money was super tight this year and was wondering if I could get all the kids something they can unwrap individually, instead of one big thing.

I asked her to send me their Christmas lists to see what that would look like.

Most of the kids asked for really expensive electronic items, totally well over 100 bucks a kid. If I got everyone something from their list, that would come to well over $1000.

I haven’t even met some of the kids, and I am not even part of a religion that celebrates Christmas, so I thought that was a ton of cash to drop.

He was honest.

I called my sister back and said hey I appreciate money is tight (because hello it is she’s raising the next line up for Braves- not that I said that) but I said I’m just not in a position myself to spend over a grand on Christmas gifts.

My sister got upset and said she just wanted to give the kids all something to open.

I said I understood, but unless she was willing to let me know some cheaper options, I wasn’t able to spend that much.

We went back and forth for a while before she snapped and called me a jerk and hung up.

He’s not sure if he messed up or not.

We haven’t spoken since.

I appreciate the position she’s in, but I just can’t justify spending that much on Christmas presents.

AITA?

The kids need to pick cheaper Christmas presents. Over $100 per kid is a lot to ask especially from a relative who has never even met them.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Here are other gift ideas that would be more affordable.

It really adds up fast when you have 9 kids!

I wouldn’t take it out on the kids, but OP could stick to the usual type of shared gift.

This is a good point.

It’s not as much fun to give gifts when they’re unaffordable.

If you thought that was an interesting story, 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.