December 18, 2007 | | Personal stuff, Rants

That’s what this trip is going to be.

It turns out that my boyfriend’s parents are basically broke. They aren’t going to be having “Christmas” for themselves until January. (Which is I guess when they will have some disposable income?) So they won’t even be giving each other Christmas presents when we’re up there.

WTF? Why are we even going? They guilted us into coming by sending us $200 of their own money (which they can’t afford). Then when we get up there, they are just going to be watching us open presents (that they bought for us even though they can’t afford it).

We tried to give back the $200 but they won’t take it, of course. I just feel really really bad about this whole situation. I don’t want to take their money. I don’t want presents from them if it means they can’t pay their bills. It’s totally unnecessary. The really sad thing is that (as per usual) they will be giving us a bunch of cheapo crappy gifts that we will never use and their money could (and should) be going to more important things like, I don’t know, being able to feed themselves!

Christmas is NOT about gifts. If they had said they wanted us to come and visit, but that money was too tight for presents, I would have NO problem with that. I would respect them MORE for being up front about it. But to go to all this trouble and then slip in a “Hey, turns out we’re broke”, just stinks of…I don’t know, something stinky. Are we supposed to feel sorry for them that they can’t manage their money? Are we supposed to be kissing their feet because they are “sacrificing” for us? There’s selflessness and then there’s being just plain stupid. So I don’t get it. What’s the point?

Needless to say we won’t be bringing the camera and the PSP. We just can’t open those expensive gifts in front of them when they are basically killing themselves to buy us presents we don’t even want. We’re just going to bring a few small things like books and DVDs.

But of course now we feel we have to get them some nice gifts to make up for their “generosity”. We got some pretty good stuff for his mom yesterday and we are going to drive all the way down to Disney-town and get some stuff from the Harley Davidson store for his step-father (because one of the ways they got into this mess was to buy a Harley that they most definitely cannot afford). I’m baking a bunch of stuff to bring as well. Hopefully, that will be enough.

We’re also cutting the trip short and coming home Sunday. It sucks that we have to drive almost 24 hours round-trip when we are only staying 2 days, but if we leave early then at least we can have a real Christmas at home. (And I can finally open my damn camera.)

Tags: christmas, family, gifts, Tennessee, trip