Helpless souls of Reddit want to know, are they the a-hole? Matt Walsh decides. Want more? Check out DailyWire+ here: https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe-plus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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| Well, Christmas is a time for merriment and cheer and joy. | |
| It's also a time when people act like a**holes. | |
| And so we'll be going back to the Am I the A**hole forum on Reddit for a little Christmas-themed edition. | |
| And we'll start here. | |
| It says... | |
| My husband's family likes to drink. | |
| Every holiday includes multiple bottles of wines of wine slash cocktails. | |
| I hate drinking. | |
| I have never drank. | |
| My father was an alcoholic. | |
| I think it's childish if you can't have fun without drinking. | |
| Ironically, it looks like she was drunk while she wrote this because there's no punctuation at all here. | |
| This year I'm hosting Christmas for a change. | |
| I decided since it's at my house, no alcohol allowed. | |
| We are all getting older and it's time to grow up. | |
| How have you gotten to the point of being an adult and you've never even heard of a comma? | |
| And this is so common these days. | |
| Like people that they don't even, they have no idea. | |
| They never heard of the concept. | |
| So they just, they don't even bother. | |
| There are no commas here. | |
| Very few periods. | |
| Anyway, my husband's sister called to ask what she could bring. | |
| She saw a recipe for a Christmas martini that she wanted to bring. | |
| I told her about my no alcohol rule. | |
| She didn't say much but must have told the rest of the family. | |
| Some of them started texting me asking me if I was serious and saying that it is lame. | |
| But I'm not budging. | |
| Now it turns out my husband's sister is hosting an alternate gathering that almost everyone is choosing to go to instead. | |
| It's so disrespectful all because they would have to spend one day sober. | |
| My husband told me he talked to his sister and we are invited to her gathering and he said that we should just go and stop causing issues, but I won't. | |
| It's so rude. | |
| Now husband is mad because I'm making him stay home and spend Christmas with me, but it was my turn to host and I chose to have a no alcohol. | |
| They could have dealt with it for one year. | |
| Okay, you're the a-hole here without question. | |
| First of all, how is drinking childish? | |
| You can't even legally drink until you're three years into legal adulthood, so I'm not sure how it's childish exactly. | |
| Second, you intentionally made your Christmas gathering less fun and then got mad when people chose not to come to it. | |
| See, it's not the way it works. | |
| You can't do that. | |
| You can have your lame teetotaler celebration, but you can't force people to attend. | |
| I'll have a bland and bland with nothing in it. | |
| Alcohol is not necessary to have a good time. | |
| It's not necessary. | |
| But it is a social lubricant, and it's not necessary, but your prohibition on it is not necessary. | |
| This is just a, this is like a power trip, and that's all this is. | |
| Why would people want to go to your event if you have unnecessarily made it less fun? | |
| That's what, that's what you have to ask yourself. | |
| And also, one other point here, because this is important. | |
| I think, I think people, this idea, just like commas, this has fallen by the wayside. | |
| You know, when you have guests over to your house, Your own comfort is actually not supposed to be the top priority. | |
| Like, yeah, it's your house, and you can do what you want, you can set whatever rules you want, but the comfort of your guests is supposed to be the top priority. | |
| And if you're bringing them over for a holiday celebration, the most important thing to you in the world should be that they have a good time. | |
| You should be more determined to see them have a good time than for you to have a good time. | |
| There will be no more partying. | |
| And that's the way it's going to work. | |
| That's part of hosting. | |
| It's like you're bringing on all of the responsibility, all the chores and everything onto yourself. | |
| And you're doing all this so that your family has a good time. | |
| It's an act of love. | |
| And if you're not ready to take that on, then it's probably better for someone else to host the event. | |
| Alright, so you're the a-hole. | |
| Good, that was easy enough. | |
| I am a happily child-free adult. | |
| Well, you're already the a-hole. | |
| I don't even need to read the rest of this. | |
| Babies have always made me super uncomfortable. | |
| I don't like looking at them. | |
| What? | |
| I mean, we've already determined. | |
| I don't think we need judge, jury, and executioner. | |
| We've already decided. | |
| We've already decided your sentence. | |
| I don't like looking at them, being in their presence, or really hearing about them. | |
| I used to have panic attacks if I had to be near a baby or toddler, even for a minute or two. | |
| If a baby or toddler touched me, I'd freak out and have to go wash off a few layers of skin. | |
| Oh, so you're mentally ill. | |
| This is a crazy person. | |
| Okay. | |
| Still the a-hole, but you know. | |
| There's no insanity plea to get you out of the a-hole ruling. | |
| I don't know what caused such an intense reaction, but it's always been like this. | |
| 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. | |
| So I'm glad you've been working on that. | |
| However, they still make me very uncomfortable and I don't want anything to do with them. | |
| I have a friend, we'll call her Sally, who knows that I do not like babies and how uncomfortable they make me. | |
| Sally had a baby several months back. | |
| How could she do that? | |
| How could she do that to you, have a baby, when she knows how you feel about them? | |
| I was polite and congratulated her. | |
| Ever since, every so often, she'll randomly message me about her baby. | |
| She'll start with, uh, I know you don't like babies, but... And then send pictures of her baby. | |
| Tell me about toys or clothes she bought for her baby, etc. | |
| I usually reply in brief messages like, nice or okay, and leave it at that. | |
| I don't want to be mean, so I just give the minimal response. | |
| I delete photos immediately. | |
| Because I'm not interested. | |
| Sally and I are not, nor have we ever been close friends. | |
| Recently, Sally posted in a group chat that we're both in, asking for people's addresses if they want to receive a Christmas card from her baby. | |
| That's how she worded it. | |
| I figured if I didn't fill out the document, that would be an easy, non-confrontational way to ensure that I would not be receiving baby pictures in the mail. | |
| Unfortunately, Sally messaged me privately today, asking for my address so that she could send a Christmas card so my silent opt-out is no longer an option. | |
| Well, I'd be the asshole if I tell her I don't want a Christmas card from her baby. | |
| And to please stop sending me photos and updates about said baby. | |
| I guarantee, by the way, that this person has, like, of course, has a cat or a dog that she's obsessed with. | |
| Which, by the way, in both cases, cat and dog, much dirtier than babies are. | |
| Babies aren't dirty at all, in fact, actually, if you, like, are practicing basic hygiene with your children. | |
| And much more annoying, too, are animals than babies. | |
| So, you're the A-hole by a mile. | |
| I mean, you set, like, a new A-hole standard here. | |
| You win gold in the A-hole Olympics, I think. | |
| Just because you naturally feel a certain way, or have always felt that way, That doesn't make it okay. | |
| So we have this idea these days that if you say, well, you know, I've always, this is how I feel about this. | |
| I've always felt like this. | |
| That automatically, all of a sudden, that makes it okay. | |
| It doesn't. | |
| It is not okay to be repulsed by children. | |
| It is not okay to hate them. | |
| It's like actively not okay. | |
| It's actually bigoted. | |
| That's how we need to start. | |
| Looking at this, people that say, I hate kids, I don't like kids, that's a bigoted response. | |
| Because think about it, you are confessing to this prejudice and against an entire demographic of human beings. | |
| And it wouldn't be acceptable with any other group you could think of, unless you were talking about white men. | |
| Then in our culture, that's okay. | |
| So white men and just all kids, those are the two groups you're allowed to despise. | |
| Accept that. | |
| Your anti-child bigotry is the least justified bigotry on earth because you're hating the most innocent people on the planet. | |
| What has a baby ever done to hurt you? | |
| So, this is not okay. | |
| It's not okay to say no in this case. | |
| And I like to think that your friend is fully aware of how this makes you feel and is just doing this to torment you, which I think makes me like your friend even more. | |
| My mom died when I was seven. | |
| My dad married a new woman about a year later. | |
| My stepmom, who I'll call Dory, had a daughter much older than me, who I'll call Kylie. | |
| My dad's explanation for why things moved so quickly is because Dory and Kylie were being evicted shortly after my dad started seeing her, and they needed a place to stay, so I didn't know them very well before they moved in. | |
| Oh my gosh, this thing is long. | |
| We're going all the way back to birth, or to when she was seven, and we're gonna get this entire story, | |
| get all the background details that we don't need. | |
| On Christmas, when passing out gifts, I only received one from my parents. | |
| This was not something that was common in my family, as my dad makes a decent amount of money. | |
| And so Kylie and I would always get at least a few gifts each. | |
| Kylie and her husband received multiple presents, and when I pointed that out, I was told that it was because they needed them for their new house and marriage. | |
| My present from my parents ended up being a hairbrush. | |
| Dory then made a big deal about how she had forgotten the stockings and would have to go get those set up and handed out. | |
| I assumed this meant that I was getting another gift in the stocking. | |
| When I was handed mine, there was a jewelry box in it. | |
| I was very excited. | |
| When I opened it, it was a golden K necklace. | |
| My name does not start with a K. | |
| When I pointed this out, Dory said that the necklace was clearly meant for Kylie and put it in the wrong stocking. | |
| I agreed that made sense and then asked if Kylie got the one meant for me and Dory said that there was not one for me. | |
| Tough break. | |
| I asked her if there was anything else she had forgotten and Dory said, if there's nothing in your stocking, you clearly didn't get anything else. | |
| At this point, I was frustrated and hurt. | |
| I started to cry. | |
| My dad ended up yelling at me and saying that I was being ungrateful and causing problems on Christmas because some kids don't get anything at all on Christmas. | |
| He was mad because he said that I caused a scene instead of talking to him after the holiday, | |
| that I ruined Kylie and her husband's first Christmas together. | |
| I ended up leaving and going to stay with my grandma for the rest of the break. | |
| However, sometimes Dory will still mention how spoiled I am for ruining the holiday over not | |
| getting what I wanted for Christmas, and it really makes me feel bad about myself. | |
| So I have to ask, am I the a-hole for how I reacted? | |
| Okay. | |
| Yes, you are. | |
| And so is your stepmom. | |
| And your dad. | |
| And Kylie is, too. | |
| We'll just throw her in. | |
| I assume she's probably a hill. | |
| This seems to be a family-wide phenomenon. | |
| It sounds like a miserable family. | |
| My God. | |
| What a nightmare. | |
| Now, it's clear that your evil Cinderella stepmother was probably trying to make a point here. | |
| She was using Christmas as a passive-aggressive way to make a point about how much she hates you and prefers the other one. | |
| So that does seem pretty clear. | |
| But at the same time, you're an adult. | |
| And it's just not under any circumstance acceptable to complain about not getting enough gifts or getting the wrong gifts on Christmas. | |
| There's nothing that can make that okay. | |
| Maybe if you open the box and there was like anthrax in it or a bomb, then it would be okay to complain. | |
| But other than that, you take the gift, you give your phony thank you, and that's it. | |
| And then you leave. | |
| And the real response here is just you don't go back to their house for Christmas again. | |
| Because you see how they treat you, that's fine. | |
| Your dad said that some kids don't get anything on Christmas, but you're not a kid, right? | |
| You're at least in college, so you're an adult. | |
| So this is just embarrassing for everyone all around. | |
| Everyone is an a-hole. | |
| All of you. | |
| You disgust me. |