'AITA for telling my wife's parents not to bring Christmas gifts this year?'

"AITA for telling my wife's parents not to bring Christmas Gifts this year?"

I (39 M) have been with my wife (38 F) for 17 Years. We have two amazing kids (5 M and 2 F). The issue: My Mother-in-Law is awful when it comes to Christmas gifts. Every year, she demands gift lists from the family and then proceeds to ignore them. She thinks knows us so well that she can do better than what we explicitly ask for.

MIL tends to "latch" onto a specific gift idea forever. My wife and her sister get yearly gifts featuring things they haven't liked since their teens. Another example: We bought our house 10 years ago.

That year, we mostly just asked for things for the house. MIL actually did well that year, getting us a set of towels for our bathrooms. However she then latched onto "Towels" and got us new towels EVERY YEAR FOR THE NEXT SIX YEARS. When my wife asked her to stop, MIL got angry and said "I don't know what your problem is. You said you liked towels."

She's also competitive with gifts. One year I surprised my wife with a trip to Japan. When MIL found out, she had to show off the necklace that FIL had given her, and bragged about the Cruise tickets that she got him, as if she had to one-up her Daughter. These are annoyances we can deal with as adults. However, this is starting to affect our kids.

Every year, we spend Christmas morning as just the four of us, with family coming over in the evening. Two years ago, when they arrived, our son (then 3) couldn't wait to show them his favorite new toy from Santa.

MIL immediately got jealous over how much he loved this toy and started shoving gifts in his face to try and distract him from it. While he did enjoy most of them, nothing could top his excitement for his Santa gift. Through the day I caught MIL hiding his Santa gift so he would play with the toys she brought instead.

Last year, when we said that they were on their way, our son began putting his new toys away in his room. When I asked him why he was doing that, he said he was hiding them because he didn't want Gramma to take them away. When they arrived and she gave him her gifts, she began complaining he wasn't "excited enough" until my wife intervened.

My wife has never loved Christmas (I get why) and I don't want our kids to feel the same. Our daughter is still too young to be affected, but it's clearly already getting to our son. We don't want to cut MIL/FIL out of Christmas, but want to avoid the issues of MIL and gifts.

I spoke to my wife about this and she 100% agreed. When we went to MIL & FIL's place for Thanksgiving, we sat down with them while the kids went outside playing with their Aunt & Uncle. MIL lost it on us. She ranted that we were "ruining her few Christmases left with her grandbabies" and said she wasn't sure they were going to come to Christmas.

We stayed for dinner so the kids could visit with A&U (who live out of state), but MIL ignored both my wife and I for the rest of the day.

A(We)TA for telling MIL to not bring gifts to Christmas?

This is what people had to say to OP:

writierthanyou said:

I was ready to say Y.T.A. until getting to the part where she takes his other toys. You're focusing on the gifts when the issue is MIL overstepping. You should have confronted her the first time she did it and laid down the law. I do think ESH for you trying to tiptoe around the real problem. It didn't even do you any good. Tell her to stop taking your kids toys, period. That is not normal.

justmyusername47 said:

NTA absolutely wrong of MIL to make your son afraid she'll take his Santa toys?? WTF is wrong with her? What did FIL say? As a grandmother, I really do love spoiling the grand baby, but I always check with the parents to make sure the gifts are OK. And I wouldn't care if they didn't think my gift was the favorite. MIL has some serious issues.

OP responded:

FIL rarely says anything, if at all. He has his own issues but I won't delve into those here

Ok_Homework_7621 said:

You should cut them out of Christmas. If you have to choose between ruining your in-laws' Christmas or your kids', there's no question who comes first. Give your kids a couple of days and if you must, see them closer to the New Year and for less time. But tbh, they were the ones who ruined Thanksgiving, I would have told them they were out of Christmas right there.

This is a consequence of their behaviour. They can decide to change their behaviour and get more access. Or they can dig in until they lose the relationship with the grandkids completely.

And teresajs said:

NTA. Stop celebrating with them on Christmas Day. Instead, offer to celebrate the weekend before or after. Keep Christmas Day for just your immediate family. Also, stop giving wishlists. MIL doesn't use them, so stop... Or maybe give generic lists ("art supplies", "building set", "stuffed animal"...).

JeepersCreepers74 said:

NTA. On the one hand, it's refreshing to read about an MIL who loves giving gifts rather than one who always forgets big occasions or is more concerned about what she's receiving. But being bad at picking gifts yet competitive about people liking them is a terrible mix.

If it were me, I would have asked that she stop giving things and give experiences with the grandkids instead. Like, her gift can be that she will take them to an amusement park and spoil them with a few souvenirs. Build memories, not Goodwill piles.

OP responded:

I honestly don't even know if she enjoys giving gifts. With her it always seems to be more about the attention she gets from giving the gift rather than giving the gift itself.