How have you Ruined Christmas in years gone by?

[TheQueef]

I don't mean the Christmas day super hangover, we've all done that.
Have you ever made such a bollocks of it that it's spoken about in hushed tones?

Mine was a fairly tame temper tantrum at Dbro who left his wife and three kids the week before Christmas.
I was banging the shopping away and lambasting him for being such a huge prick.
Took the wrapping off the frozen turkey so it'd fit the freezer.
Christmas eve got the turkey out to defrost.....of course I'd thrown it away and saved the wrapper
No one was allowed to mention it.

Anyone else?

I got pissed on wine xmas night and then thought taking a shower would be a brilliant idea, needless to say I felt light headed and fell over, bashing my head. Luckily I didn't need A&E, I felt like enough if a twat without having to explain to a nurse how I had ended up injuring myself.
Needless to say I no longer drink

The year I was born according to my sisters. I was premature born a couple of days before Christmas, so mum was still in hospital and they were left with grandma mostly. It gets mentioned every Christmas

Decided to travel to the UK (from Canada) with my English boyfriend, with no thought whatsoever to my own very small families feelings, only to break up with the guy a week before we were due to leave. Ended up eating Indian takeaway on a freezing park bench in Edinburgh Christmas Day before retiring to my youth hostel dorm room. Empty save a guy wandering round in tatty grey pants.

Classy

I once arrived at a large family Christmas with two tiny ones under 3.

My job had been to make ice (we had a ice machine in our outhouse). After breakfast, some present opening, getting children organised and car packed we arrived an hour later but without the ice.

Host was very disappointed. And after she mentioned it for the third time, I put my coat on and did the two hour round trip to get the ice.

This is still remembered in our family. It's ice, yes it helps, but it was freezing outside so drinks could still be kept cold.

after she mentioned it for the third time, I put my coat on and did the two hour round trip to get the ice.

People are batshit lol!

@RosieLemonade

Not me but DH. His sister had ordered one of those Prints which have everyone’s name and love home etc in a shape. Not my taste but I was polite. Then she gave BIL and SIL a similar present but had spelt SIL’s name wrong. Twice. In two different ways. DH couldn’t stop laughing despite being scolded by his parents and had to go lay on the bed to calm down. Only we could still hear him laughing. Was so embarrassing.

Boiled the Christmas pudding instead of steaming it.

It was a disgusting, sodden, very heavy mess. Quite inedible.

Dumped on the bird table afterwards, the birds didn't fancy it either, even the pigeons. Even the rats steered clear.

It hung around for weeks, and we eventually had to scrape it all off and throw in bin.

@fromthesamecloth did your DH get the presents in the end? That's so sweet of him to drive all that way 💜

Not my story but my dad’s (mine just involves very sickeningly hungover on Christmas Day aged about 18).
My grandparents used to visit friends on Christmas Eve every year for what I imagine to be a festive 70’s get together, martinis, flares, smoking in the front room, I have a vision...
Anyway, grandma always drove so grandad could have a couple of halves and a rum. But one particular year, grandad got inexplicably shit faced to the point grandma, dad and his 2 younger sisters had to carry him into the backseats of the car and lie him down in the back. When they got home they couldn’t wake him so grandma drove into the garage and left him in the car to sleep it off overnight. She locked the internal door from the garage to the house (she maintains this was an accident to this day ) and when he woke up in the middle of the night, he couldn’t get out of the garage for a wee so had to wee in a plant trough thing - which he didn’t realise at the time had Christmas presents hiding in the bottom
Come Christmas Day, he was furious and freezing, she was apoplectic with rage at the pissy Christmas presents and apparently dinner was eaten in stony silence.
It’s fondly remembered by my dad and aunts as the Christmas that Dad fucked up

@FixItUpChappie I'm so sorry you had to spend Christmas in Edinburgh with the takeaway and guy in ratty grey trousers (bet they were trackie bottoms ugh!) Ex bf sounds like a douche

I came in drunk at 2am, and turned the oven off thinking woah fire risk... it was slow roasting the beef. Well done me.

There are several contenders for this but I think the top two are:

The year when I had newly learnt to drive, and went to fetch my grandma to bring her to our house for Xmas day. Despite df having invested much time in educating me on how to maintain/run a car, I ran out of petrol broke down due to circumstances beyond my control.

These were the days before mobile phones. Grandma lived about 15 miles away, and we petered to a stop at mid point. So not close enough to walk back to hers, and not near enough to walk on to ours. Plus she was in her 80's and had not long had a knee replacement. Plus it was cold. Plus she didn't want me to leave her when I suggested I go and try to find a phone box or a house who's door I could knock on.

In the end, dm and df having become very worried, df set out to look for us. He found us arguing in my broken down car, and after checking we were ok and sorting the petrol situation, gave me the worst telling off. Naturally, when we got home, Christmas dinner was "absolutely ruined" which, again naturally, was my fault so dm then gave me the worst telling off. I spent the rest of the day sulking in my room.

The second contender was about 10 years ago when our Aga broke down on 23 December and nobody could fix it until January. We decided the best solution was to try and book Christmas lunch out somewhere. I wasn't very happy about this as it was going to cost (there were 6 of us) but we had little choice.

We'd sat ourselves down at the table in the restaurant, pulled the crackers and put on our paper hats, when a woman I worked with walked past. I stood up to hug her and somehow knocked the (lit) candle on our table over. The debris from the pulled crackers immediately caught light and before we knew it there was quite the fire going (I'm cringing just remembering this). Dh and eldest ds started throwing glasses of water all over the table, but let's just say it was quite some time, and much upheaval later, before things had calmed down. I was absolutely mortified for having caused such chaos and for potentially having ruined lots of people's Christmas dinner, but most people were very nice about it ...

I dropped the turkey getting it out of the oven. I broke my favourite baking dish which had been a wedding present. I washed off the turkey and served it anyway. I'm vegetarian so I don't eat it!

Restaurant fire good contender.

I'm stealing your vernacular Elephant - The were ratty grey undies. Track pants would have been a step up

The Christmas after my dad died we discovered (on Christmas Day) that neither my sister my mum or I could coordinate and cook Christmas dinner.
At 3pm in the afternoon we were sobbing over the turkey that wasn't yet cooked while the veg was all turned to mush. We ended up eating the veg first, roast potatoes about an hour later and the turkey in the evening.

18 years on we can all manage to produce a decent Christmas dinner but I as we dish up I do always remember that first year - and also feel sad that when dad was alive he did it all with such panache and made it look so easy while the rest of us lolled around.

i have ruined many, many christmases.

i once woke up on a sofa, very confused that it was only 9.30pm. mascara everywhere, proper drunk crashed out at about half 5, just between the roast and pudding.

i sorted my face out, found myself a drink and ended up in a hot tub at midnight. i’ve just about been forgiven for the almighty family row that my passing out triggered (i apparently got a little bit fighty when a lie-down was suggested)...between my family who were sick of my shit, and my BIL who just wanted everyone to get horrendously drunk and who had brought the tequila shots to the dinner table that were the engineer of my downfall.

i don’t drink any more.

Not me but the Yugoslavia Christmas reminded me of DH's flatmate at uni. He was Kosovan and here on an international student program. He got very drunk one night leading up to Christmas and DH got home from a party to find that he'd caught a goose from the lake near their halls and was butchering it in his shower

Ooh @fromthesamecloth I forgot all the presents one year too. Well the kids presents. DH had his 🙄.

We were at my parents 300 miles away on Christmas Eve when I realised. I thought he’d put the sack in, he thought I had. I cried and cried! Kids were about 2 and 4. Luckily my parents had bought them enough and they didn’t clock.

Actually made me realise they don’t need so many presents. Felt like a massive idiot though.

@SeasonallySnowyPeasant that's hilarious!

Got drunk and had a screaming row with my step dad over a point I really wasn't that bothered about in the cold light of day

@slavetothenhs not for the goose! He didn't really know what he was doing and made an awful mess. Drunken DH made the point that it had spent its life eating leftover student kebabs nibbled by rats so the chap decided not to eat it in the end. He invited DH to visit his family in Kosovo so he could show him his gun collection and they could throw grenades together in his family's field!

Seasonally was this at York?
If so no sympathy needed for the goose, they were evil and their slimy poops were responsible for many a poor student slipping over.

@Fluffycloudland77
I too have ruined Christmas by having the audacity to cook a good meal.
My Mum had been moaning that all the Christmas cooking meant she didn't get much time with her grandkids. So I took over.
She'd bought the turkey and I'd bought absolutely everything else.
It started going wrong on Christmas eve. I did a massive curry spread for everyone. My Mum spent the whole time complaining that I'd "made a mess of the kitchen" and I'd ruined her cooker. Even my incredibly mild mannered Dad had enough of listening to it and when my Mum got onto "But all the washing up!" for the third time he snapped "What washing up?" as he'd been helping me in the kitchen and all that was left to clean were the plates on the table and some serving dishes. My ruining of the cooker turned out to be a smear of beef madras on the hob that I wiped off.
On Christmas day we discovered that when my Mum had insisted my car needed to be moved she'd reversed it into a wall and broken the brake light. That didn't go down too well. My fault too, apparently.
So I cooked Christmas dinner, accompanied by a chorus of my Aunt and my Mum saying "Why are you bothering to do all that?" regularly. My response of "BECAUSE IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!" didn't go down too well. My Aunt genuinely believed we'd be better off with some Aldi version of Aunt Bessie's and a Bernard Mathews turkey roll.
I ended up cooking her own version of almost everything separately as she didn't want any pork in her stuffing and she didn't want any vegetable gratin and she didn't want......
My Mum shouted at me when I asked her to get the nice plates out to put on the table. Apparently she was far too busy to do anything like that and we'd just use the normal plates that don't all match. It was all I could do not to yell "Doing what??? Bitching at me???" back at her as that was all she'd done all day.
So yes, me going to a lot of effort to make a lovely spread ruined Christmas. DH and I agreed we'd do our own bloody thing the following year and my parents could come as long as they promised to not be miserable gits. Which we did and my Mum managed to be happy! Probably helped by my Aunt not being there as she does bring out the worst in my Mum.

@SeasonallySnowyPeasant

Not me but the Yugoslavia Christmas reminded me of DH's flatmate at uni. He was Kosovan and here on an international student program. He got very drunk one night leading up to Christmas and DH got home from a party to find that he'd caught a goose from the lake near their halls and was butchering it in his shower

What the fuck. Omg.