Am I The A＊＊hole？ Matt Walsh Decides - Christmas Edition
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
203.23822
Summary
Have you ever been in a situation where you're hosting a family party and you don't want to drink because it's just too much work and you just want to have a nice, quiet day at home with your family? Then this episode is for you!
Transcript
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Well, Christmas is a time for merriment and cheer and joy.
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It's also a time when people act like a**holes.
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And so we'll be going back to the Am I the Asshole forum on Reddit
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for a little Christmas-themed edition, and we'll start here.
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Every holiday includes multiple bottles of wines, of wine slash cocktails.
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I think it's childish if you can't have fun without drinking.
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Ironically, it looks like she was drunk while she wrote this
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Here's where I'm hosting Christmas for a change.
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I decided since it's at my house, no alcohol allowed.
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We are all getting older, and it's time to grow up.
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How have you gotten to the point of being an adult
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Like, people that they don't even, they have no idea.
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Anyway, my husband's sister called to ask what she could bring.
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She saw a recipe for a Christmas martini that she wanted to bring.
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She didn't say much, but must have told the rest of the family.
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Some of them started texting me, asking me if I was serious
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Now it turns out my husband's sister is hosting an alternate gathering
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that almost everyone is choosing to go to instead.
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It's so disrespectful, all because they would have to spend one day sober.
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My husband told me he talked to his sister, and we are invited to her gathering,
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and he said that we should just go and stop causing issues.
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Now, husband is mad because I'm making him stay home and spend Christmas with me.
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But it was my turn to host, and I chose to have a no alcohol.
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You can't even legally drink until you're three years into legal adulthood.
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Second, you intentionally made your Christmas gathering less fun
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and then got mad when people chose not to come to it.
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I'll have a bland and bland with nothing in it.
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And it's not necessary, but your prohibition on it is not necessary.
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This is just a power trip, and that's all this is.
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Why would people want to go to your event if you have unnecessarily made it less fun?
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And also, one other point here, because this is important.
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I think people, this idea, just like commas, this has fallen by the wayside.
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When you have guests over to your house, your own comfort is actually not supposed to be the top priority.
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Like, yeah, it's your house, and you can do what you want.
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But the comfort of your guests is supposed to be the top priority.
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And if you're bringing them over for a holiday celebration,
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the most important thing to you in the world should be that they have a good time.
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You should be more determined to see them have a good time than for you to have a good time.
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It's like you're bringing on all of the responsibility, all the chores, and everything on to yourself.
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And you're doing all this so that your family has a good time.
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And if you're not ready to take that on, then it's probably better for someone else to host the event.
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Babies have always made me super uncomfortable.
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I don't think we need judge, jury, and executioner.
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I don't like looking at them, being in their presence, or really hearing about them.
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I used to have panic attacks if I had to be near a baby or toddler, even for a minute or two.
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If a baby or toddler touched me, I'd freak out and have to go wash off a few layers of skin.
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There's no insanity plea to get you out of the a-hole ruling.
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I don't know what caused such an intense reaction, but it's always been like this.
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I've been working on at least being more cordial and tolerant with babies and toddlers to the point that I no longer have panic attacks.
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However, they still make me very uncomfortable, and I don't want anything to do with them.
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I have a friend, we'll call her Sally, who knows that I do not like babies and how uncomfortable they make me.
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How could she do that to you, have a baby, when she knows how you feel about them?
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Ever since, every so often, she'll randomly message me about her baby.
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She'll start with, I know you don't like babies, but, and then send pictures of her baby.
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Tell me about toys or clothes she bought for her baby, et cetera.
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I usually reply in brief messages like, nice or okay, and leave it at that.
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I don't want to be mean, so I just give the minimal response.
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I delete photos immediately, because I'm not interested.
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Sally and I are not, nor have we ever been close friends.
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Recently, Sally posted in a group that chat that we're both in asking for people's addresses
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if they want to receive a Christmas card from her baby.
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I figured if I didn't fill out the document, that would be an easy, non-confrontational way
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to ensure that I would not be receiving baby pictures in the mail.
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Unfortunately, Sally messaged me privately today asking for my address so that she could
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send a Christmas card, so my silent opt-out is no longer an option.
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Will I be the asshole if I tell her I don't want a Christmas card from her baby, and to
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please stop sending me photos and updates about said baby?
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I guarantee, by the way, that this person has, of course, has a cat or a dog that she's
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Which, by the way, in both cases, cat and dog, much dirtier than babies are.
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Babies aren't dirty at all, in fact, actually, if you are practicing basic hygiene with your
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And much more annoying, too, are animals than babies.
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I mean, you set like a new a-hole standard here.
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Just because you naturally feel a certain way, or have always felt that way, that doesn't
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So, we have this idea these days that if you say, well, you know, I've always, this
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is how I feel about this, I've always felt like this.
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That automatically, all of a sudden, that makes it okay.
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People that say, I hate kids, I don't like kids.
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That's a bigoted response, because think about it, you are confessing to this prejudice
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and against an entire demographic of human beings, and it wouldn't be acceptable with
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any other group you could think of, unless you were talking about white men.
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So, white men and just all kids, those are the two groups you're allowed to despise.
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Except that your anti-child bigotry is the least justified bigotry on earth, because
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you're hating the most innocent people on the planet.
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And I like to think that your friend is fully aware of how this makes you feel, and is just
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doing this to torment you, which I think makes me like your friend even more.
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My stepmom, who I'll call Dory, had a daughter much older than me, who I'll call Kylie.
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My dad's explanation for why things move so quickly is because Dory and Kylie were being
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evicted shortly after my dad started seeing her, and they needed a place to stay.
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So, I didn't know them very well before they moved in.
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We're going all the way back to birth, or to when she was seven, and we're going to get
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this entire story, get all the background details that we don't need.
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On Christmas, when passing out gifts, I only received one from my parents.
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This was not something that was common in my family, as my dad makes a decent amount of
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money, and so Kylie and I would always get at least a few gifts each.
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Kylie and her husband received multiple presents, and when I pointed that out, I was told that
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it was because they needed them for their new house and marriage.
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My present from my parents ended up being a hairbrush.
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Dory then made a big deal about how she had forgotten the stockings and would have to go
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I assumed this meant that I was getting another gift in the stocking.
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When I was handed mine, there was a jewelry box in it.
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When I pointed this out, Dory said that the necklace was clearly meant for Kylie and put
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I agreed that made sense and then asked if Kylie got the one meant for me, and Dory said
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I asked her if there was anything else she had forgotten, and Dory said, if there's nothing
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in your stocking, you clearly didn't get anything else.
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My dad ended up yelling at me and saying that I was being ungrateful and causing problems on Christmas
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because some kids don't get anything at all on Christmas.
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He was mad because he said that I caused a scene instead of talking to him after the
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holiday, that I ruined Kylie and her husband's first Christmas together.
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I ended up leaving and going to stay with my grandma for the rest of the break.
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However, sometimes Dory will still mention how spoiled I am for ruining the holiday over
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not getting what I wanted for Christmas, and it really makes me feel bad about myself.
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So I have to ask, am I the a-hole for how I reacted?
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And so is your stepmom and your dad, and Kylie is too.
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Now, it's clear that your evil Cinderella stepmother was probably trying to make a point here.
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She was using Christmas as a passive-aggressive way to make a point about how much she hates
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So that does seem pretty clear, but at the same time, you're an adult, and it's just
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not under any circumstance acceptable to complain about not getting enough gifts or getting the
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Maybe if you open the box and there was like anthrax in it or a bomb, then it would be okay
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But other than that, you take the gift, you give your phony thank you, and that's it.
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And the real response here is just you don't go back to their house for Christmas again
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Your dad said that some kids don't get anything on Christmas, but you're not a kid, right?
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You're at least in college, so you're an adult.
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So this is just embarrassing for everyone all around.