Woman hosting Christmas dinner says she’ll cancel if people come without food

A woman who agreed to host Christmas dinner for her family did so on the understanding that they’d each bring a dish along with them to save her from doing all the work. Now they’ve backtracked and she’s threatening to cancel altogether

A woman who agreed to host Christmas dinner this year did so on the condition that each guest cook a dish for the festive meal, only to have them disappoint her at the last minute. According to this fed-up hostess, Christmas ‘is a big affair ‘ in her rather large family, and they will usually have more than 30 people sitting down to dinner together.

She went on to explain that, in her culture, celebrations begin on Christmas Eve, kicking off with ‘a huge dinner’ traditionally made up of 12 different dishes. With this in mind, she asked that everyone bring a dish from the list, with the understanding that they’d share out the cost and any leftovers.

Taking to Reddit, where she goes by the username u/ChristmasConundrum1, the exasperated woman explained that she had planned everything out well in advance, even handing out the list to family members back in August. Unfortunately, things haven’t exactly gone to plan.

She wrote: “I’ve been getting calls from my family since yesterday. Everyone has an excuse for why they won’t be able to bring a meal. Excuses range from ‘I’m busy with work’ or ‘I have kids, I don’t have time to cook with them on Christmas break’ or ‘my dog ate my cooking book’ (the last one is a joke but some of their excuses are equally as funny).

“With almost everyone bailing, I’m quite annoyed. It’s the 23rd and I’d have to do all the cooking myself, meaning that I’d have to go and do shopping now (5pm) with shops being packed, spend hundreds if not thousands and then cook and bake all night and likely not have everything ready.”

After checking through her lengthy to-do list, the home cook admitted she ‘wanted to cry’. Panicked, she called up her family, and issued an ultimatum via a conference call.

She continued: “I told them that I won’t be doing all the cooking and they had three options. One, they all cook as we agreed, two, I make a big batch of homemade pizza and we’ll have Christmas pizza which was met with cries ‘you can’t do that to kids’.

“Three, I cancel the dinner. They come over and I don’t open my door, pretending I’m not home while eating my pizza, watching something in bed. They’re fuming, saying that I ruined Christmas and I’m heartless.”

She’s ended up getting so much abuse from her family that she’s had to mute their phone calls and text messages and now wonders whether she could be the one in the wrong, as they claim.

One fellow Reddit user advised: “It’s always insane to me how the person (who is often a woman) who volunteers and preps their home is also usually the one who is saddled with all the big, most expensive, most time-consuming dishes. So many people just think they can show up and do nothing at a supposed family event. Screw all of that.”

Another commented: “It was their choice to refuse to bring food. Cooking dinner for 30 or more is an enormous project. You should not be expected to do this.”

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