Thread: Christmas Conflicts..

I really need some objective opinions on this one... I've been married 2 years. Fortunately, my sister in law lives abroad and doesn't get home very often, but the few times she has come to stay with us, she's insisted on bringing friends with her (in addition to her very wild, but loveable two small children). The last time she did this, we ended up having to take care of her kids while she went out partying with her friends every night. We hardly got to visit with her at all and found her friends to be rather unappreciative of our hospitality in putting them up/feeding them/etc. (My SIL and her friends are all in their 40s, so youth is not an excuse in this case). Not to mention the fact that the pressure of having 6 adults and 2 children in a 2 bed, 600sq foot house a week after we were married was a real test of our sanity!

So that's this history, and here's the problem: This December will be our first Christmas in our newly purchased house, and we can't wait to have both our families over for the holidays as we've never been in a house large enough to host a Christmas dinner before! Both our families live out of town so they'll all be staying at our house for the holiday, and it will be my parents' first time seeing the house so I'm anxious that they be as comfortable as possible. Of course, my SIL had the cheek to invite FOUR of her friends to join her at our place for the holiday! We said no way because we couldn't handle having TEN adults and 2 children in our 4 bed house, but now SIL says two of the friends have already booked flights so if we don't accommodate them then she and her kids will have to go spend Christmas at her father's house (3 hours from us) with the the two friends. That would be fine with me, but my husband is putting pressure on me to agree to let them stay with us because he's desperate to have his family at our house for Christmas and is willing to put up with the friends in order to make that happen. I, on the other, hand feel completely manipulated by SIL and don't want to give in to her again. I suggested her friends stay in a hotel near us and just come for dinner so at least we don't have to worry about finding bed space for them, but SIL says the friends are short on money and can't afford a hotel and my husband thinks it's rude to make people stay in a hotel during Christmas. My theory is that SIL doesn't particularly enjoy her family's/my husband's company so she brings friends with her everytime so that she doesn't have to spend much time with family.

What's the appropriate thing to do here? If I let the friends stay, all of us (including my parents) are impacted for at least 3 days and 2 nights as we now have to share 2 bathrooms between 10 people instead of 8 and we have to give up our family room so that these strangers have some place to sleep. Plus, my husband and I will have to go to the extra hassle of trying to come up with more bedding, food, etc for these people. If they were nice and fun, I wouldn't mind but since we haven't had much luck with SIL's friends in the past, I doubt that these people will make any effort with us or be at all appreciative of our efforts to host them. On the other hand, if I say no, my husband doesn't get to spend Christmas with his family so he'll be sad, my SIL will be pissed off, and my father-in-law will potentially have to cancel his trip to us to host my SIL's friends. I have considered offering to pay for the friends' hotel myself, but that could cost me about $200-$300 and we're not an affluent couple so it's not exactly what I'd like to do with my spare cash around Christmas time.

One part of me feels petty for putting my foot down and upsetting my husband by saying no to SIL, but another part of me feels bullied and manipulated by SIL and needs to stand up to her and try and keep Christmas as stress free as possible for my parents and I.

Any advice would be appreciated!!