Are family reunions for the lower class?

There’s usually that one relative that’s passionate about them. In our family it was my grandmother’s brother who was also a local politician and prominent in his community if not upper class.

Perhaps everyone in your family was a stuck up cunt like you and they all just hated each other?

I think they’re generally lower class. Certainly if everyone is wearing a matching t-shirt and/or held at a shitty place like Disney World.

Getting together over the holidays and at the occasional birthday party should suffice.

what an odd question

We never had family reunions but everyone gathered at Thanksgiving.

Family social events are not inherently low-class, you amoeba!

OP is a racist cunt. Black families religiously have annual family reunions. It's a very cultural, binding ritual.

My family can’t even get everyone together for a funeral,so I don’t think a reunion would work.

ALSO OP: My trashy family wants to have a family reunion and my mother insists that I come. I am freaked out that all of my gay friends are going to figure out that I come from trash if they hear about this, so just in case, I am going to pretend to be UMC on DL and double check that these are as trashy as I thought. It would suck if people found out I went to Northwestern Nebraska Community College, not Northwestern like I tell people."

"Certainly if everyone is wearing a matching t-shirt and/or held at a shitty place like Disney World"

This sums it up nicely. There's nothing wrong with getting together with your relatives but the second you involve matching t-shirts it becomes a lower class activity.

I think it’s cultural. Families in the part of Pennsylvania where some older members of my family live have huge family reunions every summer - some with several hundred people. Living in California, I almost never hear of such things happening here. Maybe small family get together a, but not the big to-dos I used to go to in my youth.

After researching genealogy for many years, I got on some family lists, many of which have these big annual family reunions. I’ve noticed it’s mostly the Pennsylvania Dutch families having the big blowout reunions (but that trend could just be due to my particular heritage).

I don’t think it’s trashy to get together with a bunch of relatives for a big party. It helps understand one’s roots.

The big, blow-out sort that seek to bring together every fourth cousin thrice removed from every hill and hollow... Trashy.

T-shirts are just an advertisement that the family is trashy.

Rich families generally have ability to see each other as much as they want and summer and winter homes are usually justified as “places where the family can be together”.

We had a large reunion when my grandfather turned 100. He had ten kids, so there were a LOT of people there. I thought it was fun and interesting. We got a big family tree put together.

It does seem to be something that families who weren't very good about birth control tend to do.

Sounds like a horrible way to spend your money and a weekend. Somebody is going to start a fight. Somebody else is going to ask to borrow money. Somebody's spouse is going to get too friendly with another relative. Somebody's going to have something nasty to say about the food or somebody else in the family.

Count me out.

So in modern culture, we say "lower class" when we disparage others with the intent to place ourselves in some superior positions. We we never use lower class when we analyze economic structures and practices to allow for huge disparities of income, and leverage government and economic policies not just to protect wealth, but to facilitate the further disproportionate accrual of wealth. Capital accrues to capital at the expense those without capital.

Observation #2: Those with means have time and resources to meet with family/relatives whenever seems possible or agreeable. The working class needs to plan - time off from work for multiple people, apportion scarce resources to the planning and execution of the event.

DLers and their indefatigable obsession with class.

Never change, DL.

It depends on whether or not the potato salad served at the reunion has mustard in it.

I'd say it's a middle class thing. Those custom printed t shirts aren't cheap.

That’s what funerals are for.

[quote]Black families religiously have annual family reunions.

Do any of their fathers show up?

The only reunions in our family are the will readings.

Just the ones who fucked your old lady, R21. That means attendance will be in the thousands.

We had them as a child, mainly put together by an older relative. Haven't been to one in years and I think it's due to people scattering around the US and just being busy. We usually just had them at Great-grandma's or Aunt So and So's house. I'm in the South btw but we never had t-shirts. That's weird to me.

I went to one on my father's side about 10 years ago. My dad and I aren't exactly estranged but I wouldn't say we are very close. I grew up with my mom and didn't know any of these people.

It was enough to know I'm happy that I was raised by my mom's side of the family.

Not knowing your Aunt’s name is literal violence, R24.

It's is, or maybe was, a Southern thing.

Our family is not upper class by any means.... I suppose we might have been solid middle class when we were kids. But we were over-educated with a lots of graduate degrees and professionals (ministers, military officers, college professors, scientists, business executives). Successful as adults we've had family reunions at rented mansions in Ireland, Maine, San Juan Islands... etc.

Are we lower class for doing this?

Those aren’t family reunions, that’s called vacationing with your family.

No, they were reunions. We even had T-shirts for everyone with pictures and the word "reunion" on it. The world isn't a certain way just because you want it that way... right?

Oh wow r30 that is really tacky

We never had one, but it sounds like fun depending on the family members.

It’s disappointing that some tell LIES, saying that they go on family vacations, whilst wearing family reunion t-shirts, just to prove a point.

I think they're like a flyover thing. Deep South, too. I don't know that it's about "class".

Lower class wear matching T-shirts at family reunions.

Rich people do too at their family reunions, but they have the Harvard logo if you know what I mean.

I attend one every year on my father's side (except 2020) and most are middle class. It's fun and I've met some really nice people.

I always thought them more of a rural thing but I grew up in the country and we have two a year, one on each side. Rural people historically tended to work harder on farms so you had to make an effort to see each other. I never thought of them as lower class. But then I don't really think of much as lower class, except t-shirts at funerals and refusing to get vaccinated. And I'm basically a snob. Class, to me, is about character.

Who cares? If you want to go to a family reunion who cares if it's lower class, upper class, middle class or whatever. Clench your jaw like Thurston Howell and live in your fantasy world. Maybe Gilligan can drive you in a coconut cart.

We had one, of a sort, at my grandmother's memorial service in 2006. Only time her surviving children (my mother and aunt, their brother deceased), and all seven cousins together at once.

One of my uncle's daughter's has a textbook case of narcissistic personality disorder, including classic frequent legal cases. She has no middle name, so her brother refers to her as Patty Sue.

My mother resented my aunt's running the show. The food at my grandmother's favorite restaurant, normally decent, was limited to basically high school cafeteria buffet as that day. It was explained to my aunt that it was the best they could do with specific staffing issues on that one Saturday specifically. However, her daughter was taking a series of Saturday college classes towards teacher certification that term, so this was the only day she could attend.

Attendance ran the spectrum from my aunt's husband with a PhD from MIT, to my uncle's kids, only one of whom had a regular high school diploma (as the "highest educated").

As an aside, I did note that I'm the only one of the nine descendants with blue eyes.

I'm a relatively direct descendant of someone involved in the whole Hatfield and McCoy fiasco and there are always reunions. The families have held joint reunions since the late 1990s I believe. I don't care for the whole "har har they were hillbillies, let's make fake moonshine and sell t-shirts" thing.

We grew up having them (we still do), but never went as far as having t-shirts printed. It's a large potluck picnic, with the venue, meats & drinks provided by the account set aside for the event (we have door prizes and so on, to fund it). It's a wonderful thing. As a kid, I always looked forward to it. I'll be curious to see what happens to the event in the next decade or so, given older members have been dying off for about that same amount of time.

And I'm with R2, for the record.

OP, why are you so concerned with how families chose to socialize?

A posh family reunion (filmed at Claridige's in London) is the subject of a wonderful BBC Two miniseries of 2001 written by Stephen Poliakoff, Perfect Strangers (titled Almost Strangers for BBC America.)

A rich (well, mostly rich) family assembles maybe 150 of its own at Claridge's for a three-day series of presentations about family history, including individual presentations to each member from the family genealogist. Lies are uncovered, and strange truths. As the genealogist says: in any family there are three or four great stories that no one knows in whole.

No T-shirts, but a great series, one of the best things the BBC have ever done.

(The first episode at link]