As if the pressure of the holidays wasn’t enough, you might have to consider hosting Christmas at your home. Having a large group of guests around for Christmas might be difficult if your eating choices do not match. A woman wondered if she was a jerk for declining to entertain her non-vegan in-laws for the holidays. Scroll down to read the entire story. Who do you believe was at fault? Have you ever cooked non-vegan cuisine for someone else if you’re vegan? Share your thoughts on this situation.
Source: Reddit
My husband (29M) and I (27F) are both vegans. We have been married for four years. Our respective families live far from each other so we alternate which side of the family we spend Christmas with (his or mines). His family takes turns hosting Christmas and have all sorts of family traditions including doing a seafood dinner (apparently a European thing).
It is a big dinner that includes the whole extended family (aunts/uncles, cousins, nieces/nephews, etc). My husband and I don’t partake in the seafood but there are always some side dishes which are fine or only need minor adjustments to be vegan. In previous years, I have declined for us to host because I don’t want to prepare meat dishes.
This year we are spending Christmas with his family and last week I asked him who would be hosting. To my complete surprise, he said that we would be hosting because some of his cousins asked him to since they wanted an excuse to visit our city. I expressed my surprise that his family would all agree to have a vegan Christmas dinner and he replied that they didn’t. At this point I was confused because there was no way that I was going to cook seafood and I told him as much. He said that he had already agreed for us to host and that everyone had already started making travel plans and some flights/hotels have already been booked so we couldn’t back out now. He assumed that I would be okay preparing seafood for his family because apparently he is fine handling seafood. I do almost all the cooking because he is terrible at it so him cooking Christmas dinner is not an option.
Now all my in-laws are mad at me for “ruining Christmas” by cancelling the plans they had made and are threatening to disinvite us from the Christmas celebration. My husband is upset at me for wrecking his relationship with his relatives and also being an “unreasonable vegan.”
I need some advice on if I’m wrong.
Here are a few comments on the story where it was originally posted:
