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Family traditions can get complicated once both sides start treating holiday time like something that needs to be divided perfectly.

One mother wants to keep a July 4th trip her family has enjoyed for decades, but when her in-laws demand alternating years, would you give in?

The request feels harder to justify because her husband never celebrated the holiday that way with them before.

So this one should be good. Let’s see how it went down.

AITA – I want to keep our family tradition

Context: My in-laws are mean, demanding, and entitled. They have disregarded our parenting rules constantly, belittled me time and again, and gaslit us both repeatedly. I am in therapy.

OK. So when I (42F) married my spouse (41m), his parents wanted us to spend every holiday together as one happy family.

My parents wanted to alternate holidays except for our big family Chanukah party, which is also what we wanted to do. So that’s what we do. July 4th isn’t a part of this. My parents and I have been doing the same mini vacation every year on July 4th since I was a teenager.

They’ve always spent July 4th with her parents.

When I met my spouse more than 13 years ago, he joined us. When we had the kids 6 years ago, they obviously came with us too. We look forward to it every year. The kids love it. I love it. He loves it. My husband never spent the 4th of July with his family, so he more than happily joined us every year.

Now, his parents are demanding that we switch every other year for the 4th of July. They are claiming that they had special traditions with their son. He says that he was always at a friend’s house.

My MIL’s birthday is July 14th, so we have another mini vacation every year with them for her birthday. Since the July 4th weekend is three days, and her birthday weekend is only two days, we’ve also been going up for a SECOND weekend in August.

Now, the in-laws are mad because they’re not getting their way.

We have tried saying that if we alternated July 4th, we would not ALSO go up the next weekend. We’d just celebrate it when we were up. His parents got so angry that we would ever even consider that.

So here we are. I love my family’s tradition for over 20 years. My husband has loved it for 13. My kids have loved it for their entire lives. And his parents want it every other year, even though it’s not something they celebrate.

We will refuse to go. They don’t have the right to make us all absolutely miserable just so they can see us for a three-day weekend that they only started caring about when I met my husband.

AITA?

Wow! Those in-laws sound like something else.

Let’s see how the readers over at Reddit feel about the whole thing.

According to this person, they don’t have to be the center of attention.

For this person, the husband needs to handle it.

Here’s a great point.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a sister who refuses to give up her own holiday traditions to spend the day with her family at her brother’s cabin.

This reader thinks they should go low-contact.

The July 4th trip had been part of her life for more than 20 years and became a tradition for her husband and kids too.

Her in-laws still wanted alternating years, despite already getting another family trip around her mother-in-law’s birthday.

At that point, a clear boundary made more sense than reshuffling a tradition everyone in her immediate family already loved.

They wanted a turn with the holiday, but unfortunately, family traditions do not come with a custody schedule.