The Christmas season is very busy, and it is often hard to find the time to get together with everyone you want to see.

What would you do if you had made plans with your family, but then at the last minute, your siblings said they wanted to change them so that they could go skiing with friends?

That is what happened to the sister in this story, which made her really upset, but she gave in and changed her plans.

AITA for calling my siblings out who wanted to move family Christmas plans to accommodate a catch up with their friends?

For context, all of our family are having separate Christmas’s this year where we’re travelling to see the other sides of our family on the 25th.

We are all in our 50s with young / teenage children. In early November we found one date in December we could all make to catch up and celebrate Christmas together before we all departed for separate trips.

We had this date booked in the diary for 6+ weeks and my husband and I have declined subsequent plans with friends because that day was reserved for the family catch up.

Well, this is disappointing.

The week of, as I’m messaging my sister-in-law to confirm finer details of the menu/plans for the upcoming day she mentioned that my brother (her husband) was calling other members of the family to try and get the date of the scheduled family catch up we had planned so they could go skiing with friends as the weather was “looking great that day”.

It is clear where his priorities are.

Essentially the suggestion was we keep plans “loose” while they decided whether they would a) go skiing with friends, b) still commit to original scheduled plan to have the family Christmas that day or c) try and reschedule for a different day (there were no other dates that aligned when originally booked this in Nov and that was still the case a week out).

She was clearly hurt by this.

I admit I overreacted to this suggestion at the time over text that we “keep our weekend free” and rather than just saying “no the suggested new date doesn’t work for us” and explained that the mere suggestion of changing the date was hurtful as it showed to me they were wanting to prioritise friends over family.

That obviously went down like a cold cup of sick.

Well, at least they have smoothed things over.

We have since smoothed things over and we have ended up conceding and changing our plans to accomodate them going skiing and re-worked our plans to fit in a family catch up around other plans we have for the following day which will put extra pressure on our family but will work better for them.

Upon reflection my husband and I are still left mystified… the original point I was making to my sister in law and the reason I felt hurt in the first place remains the same.

They made a commitment, and they should have stuck to it.

They wanted to move plans for a family Christmas catch up to prioritise a catch up with their friends, we declined catch ups with our friends that same day so we could prioritise a family Christmas.

I have been made to feel like the “bad guy” for challenging this as though plans were “loose” and things “always change at this time of year” and I “could’ve just said no and we would’ve kept the original plans on the original date.”

They are being inconsiderate.

But when everyone is busy trying to fit in catch ups in the lead up to Christmas break it has left me feeling like we are not as much of a priority/ consideration to them as they are to us?

Without going into to many other details my partner and I always feel like we concede or be the bigger people and now I just feel like our usual amiable and flexible approach gets taken advantage of.

Until you stand firm, you will always be taken advantage of.

I decided to put my foot down, it backfired, we changed plans to suit them… I still feel hurt.

AITA?

Not at all, the family members who won’t stick to set plans are out of line though.

Read on to see what the people in the comments think about this situation.

Here is someone who says she should have stuck with the plans.

It is a painful reality.

I agree with this commenter.

This commenter says they need to stop accommodating.

December is busy for everyone.

Make your plans and stick to them.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.