People say the darndest things at holiday gatherings! What have your relatives said at past gatherings?

My Gram came to visit us in Colorado for her last Thanksgiving. We visited Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs area. She howled on and off that trip because of the coyote that she saw in The Garden.

My great-grandmother was quite the old battle axe and had more than a few run-ins with other family members. Once when my uncle brought his wife and 2 children to a family gathering, she looked at the youngest child (everyone suspected the wife had had an affair and that the child was not my uncle's) and said, "That's not one of ours."

I just thought of another one. My sister's F I L was a real irascible old fart. I used to make sure I wasn't sitting anywhere near him cause he could be really insulting. One year I arrived late. He looked me up and down and said "well I see your t*ts have grown and your not as stupid looking"

Yep, can't make this stuff up.

Grandmother was mentally sharp, but chock full of issues like anxiety and depression. She also harped on looks, especially weight... despite being disabled and thus some weight gain from the resulting lack of activity.

Anyhoo, we’re all eating and as usual the topic comes to diets. For whatever reason grandma looks at me and says “you ought to go to Jenny Craig.” The hell?! I was 19 and weight was a very sensitive issue for me. Yeah I had a little extra padding, but was not obese by any means. She was heavier than me!

I kept it together through dinner but had to step away and cry a little. Mom said “Oh ignore her, she’s nuts.” Too late; was already embarrassed.

Grandfather topped it a few years later. There was a new baby in the family (my nephew) and of course he was the star of the show. So grandpa decides it’s a great time to nudge my cousin’s wife and ask “When are you gonna have one?”— knowing full well she’d had two miscarriages that year.

She got teary instantly (who could blame her?) but handled it nicely, and said “Grandpa, please don’t say things like that, it hurts my feelings!”. Grandpa, ever so clueless, just says “Ahh c’mon.”

when I was a teenager, someone in my aunt’s (my mother’s sister) in-laws family died & they had a post-service family gathering at my aunts MILs house. I hadn’t seen my aunts MIL in many years because my aunt & uncle had moved to SoCal and we hardly ever saw them. Anyway my mom & I went over to the house to set up before the family arrived and when my aunts MIL walked in and saw me, first thing she said was “wow how did you lose all that weight”? I had no idea what she was talking about because I’d never had any weight to loose! I was always very petite and skinny! Always smaller than the other kids my age. I just looked at her confused and said “I don’t know”. But even if I had been over weight at one point, WHO SAYS THAT TO A TEENAGER?

Oh brother. Well, I have ALWAYS fought excess weight issues my whole life and have been on one diet or another for what seems like ages. One year at a holiday gathering after I'd lost a bunch of weight, my nasty old Aunt (mother's sister) didn't recognize me. My mother is going, "Oh you remember Chris, she used to be really FAT" and she held her arms out in parentheses around her hips and waddled around to show everybody what 'fat' looks like. So my Aunt goes OH YEAH, I remember. NOW KEEP IT OFF THIS TIME!!!

I never did like the old bat and after that rotten comment, I liked her a whole lot less. Two peas in a pod, my narcissistic mother and her insufferable sister!

Since my mother has gone into a memory care unit her tact has disappeared out the window. She introduces my sister and I to all and sundry - knows we are her daughters, cannot always remember names - and then finishes with the very obvious descriptor that we are fat! Occasionally she says I am old and fat - another obvious descriptor. She has also become obsessed with teeth. She often asks staff to come up close to her, to smile, and then she visually appraises their teeth. We were embarrassed for them the first time, then we realised with dementia patients it is a case of anything goes.

Hey Shezza1...........my mother introduces me as HER mother! And she started doing this years ago while still in Assisted Living!!! You should get a few pairs of those fake hillbilly teeth for the CGs at your mom's Memory Care..........so the next time she wants to visually appraise their teeth, they can pop a pair in and REALLY give her something to talk about!! Oh to be a fly on the wall..........LOL

All of us women used to gather at MILs house a few days before Christmas to make Tamales. One year in particular my MILs sister/my husband’s aunt joined us. Everyone would bring something-either cooked meat or Chile for the sauce or give $$ toward the masa. So my husband’s aunt had bought the Chile’s and MIL was upset because she bought New Mexico Chile’s which are very spicy! She was supposed to have gotten something mild like a California Chile. So that set the tone for the whole day, they just argued non stop while they tried to get the sauce made & tone down the spiceyness because MIL did not like spicy food. I can’t remember the context of the conversation now but I’m sitting at the table spreading masa in to the corn husks with my SILs thinking we will never finish, while MIL and her sister are by the stove fussing with meat when her sister suddenly yells out “you and your damn kids think you are better than me” and she storms out of the house! And MIL is just beside herself because her sister “cursed” at her kids LOL! Like she was irate that her sister said “your damn kids”. She was so angry because her sister used a semi-bad word when referring to her kids! So ridiculous! I wish I could remember what exactly happened because it was a doozy and we were all trying not to laugh because they were both behaving so utterly ridiculous! And my MIL could hold a grudge better than anyone I know. They didn’t talk for at least a year after this.

The tamales turned out good though AND we got to split aunt’s share since she stormed out before the first batch was even done!

My family, immediate and extended have always had a mean streak. Comments about appearance were always a way of hurting. Fortunately for me I have evolved some since those days. I don't focus on appearances and if people throw comments like those around now I just give them a sympathetic look as if to say "how sad that you still think like that" Don't get me wrong, I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to look good. But as age creeps on, apart from trying to take good care of oneself there isn't much you can do about it.

- Quite sad - really. Had conversation with brother in law as wife is almost 3 years into an Alzheimer's diagnosis.
- Tell relative I am bringing Russian black bread for Christmas. Note to self - don't do it again as her response was NOT "thank you." "What's that?"

Sendhelp,

I think you should type these up and send them to a publisher. I am not sure what the title of the book should be but it would be hysterical.

Would be different from the caregiver books out there on Amazon. That’s for sure. Hahaha

My husband’s aunt is a typical ‘old Southern lady’. And unfortunately part of her old southern mentality is religious indoctrination (according to her, America has gone to Hell because they took prayer out of schools and let gays get married) with a side of racism.

(I’m Southern too, so I already know it’s “not all southerners.”)

During dinner she remarked that two of her grandkids had gotten baptized in her church, and what a special thing that was to her. She was truly sincere about it, and we all agreed it was a good thing.

Then not 10 minutes later, the topic is neighborhoods around our city, and she says “oh, those [N-word]s ruined what was a good part of town”. Husband, myself, and the cousins around our age said nothing but we all looked at each other like “the hell?”. This is from a woman who has never said so much as the word “damn” in front of anyone, but the N-word? No problem!

Plenty of racism and jingoism north of the Mason-Dixon Line, too.

Some of my family of origin and most of my in-laws pepper their conversations with that nonsense. Sadly, holiday gatherings frequently serve as a showcase for their hate speech.

The part that always bowls me over? The biggest noise-makers have immigrant parents or immigrant grandparents.

But - of course - their people emigrated from the “correct” countries.

And built the great USA by toiling away in miserable factories. (Taking jobs away from Americans??).

And lived in ethnic enclaves where the adults could get by without learning English. (De rigueur in the 1st half of the 20th century. But unacceptable nowadays. 🤔)

And used their “weird” food and old-country rituals to bond with each other - and achieve pariah status. (All fine, because these immigrants did not hail from south of the border or Muslim countries or today’s war-torn 3rd world.)

And flooded the local schools with their filthy ragamuffin children. (When this applies to Dad or Grandpa, it’s a touching vignette. When this happens in their school districts today, it’s fodder for a vein-bulging rant.)

The tunnel vision is EXHAUSTING.

There’s no talking sense to these relatives. They truly Do Not See It.

**face palm**

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This was supposed to be humorous and lighthearted fun. Why start badmouthing people and bringing race into it?

As I read all of your stories, I thought of a couple:
When I was a young mom of two, we visited my least favorite grandmother, a 2000 miles away. She was going to church, and then would make scalloped potatoes for a family gathering. I thought I would help, and I made the potatoes. My Gma chewed me out for doing that. At the dinner, several aunts asked my Gma if she had a new recipe, because the potatoes were very good! Tee-hee.

Also when I had two little ones, my family & my sister's family all flew "home" for Christmas. The adorable 2mo old niece had thrown up on the plane. Little did we know, she was sharing the stomach flu with all 14 of us, in the same house. I thought I had made it through with out it. On the 4th day, I asked Mom, what's for dinner. She asked me, "What do you feel like puking up? She was right. (: