Worst Christmas meal ever? Can be because of hideous food, dreadful company, unbearable tension...or all of the above!

[sprigatito]

We had some terrible Christmases when I was a child - divorced parents, nobody got along, my mother was a crap cook and had a violent temper and my stepfather had Victorian tendencies (no talking at the table) so Christmas dinner was generally horrendous on a number of levels. This wasn't improved during the years when my dad was around for Christmas, because we'd get dropped off at his (freezing, uninhabitable) house straight after dinner, where he'd have bought enough meat and cheese to feed an army and expect us to eat it all. Christmases at home tended to end with a blazing row and someone storming out in the middle of dinner/charades/the night.

I love Christmas now (and am NC with my mother) but at around this time of year I do get the slight collywobbles remembering how awful it used to be. I have this horrible but funny image of my mother's face under a gaily coloured paper hat snarling "you've ruined Christmas for everyone, now shut your mouth or I'll knock your block off"

So what's your "worst Christmas dinner ever" story?

Oh that’s horrible. Really sad.

mine have been fine but a bit stressful as an adult dealing with awkward in laws.

one year the boiler broke so it was freezing and it brought out all the war stories but again nothing really awful!

The one where the two year old cried all night because he didn’t want his cousin in his room (autistic) followed by said cousin starting with a stomach bug on Christmas morning which promptly whipped round the rest of us!

Ending up in a&e and having to stay in with a quinsy. I thought whisky would cure it I was wrong.

Poor you. Sounds absolutely horrible, I'm glad you have lovely Christmas times now.
Nothing to compare to yours, but my worse one was a work do at a hotel -one of those big party night occasions with mass catering and a disco. Food was absolutely shite, took 3 HOURS to serve two courses and it was all stone cold and lumped on the plate like slop. Didn't eat anything other than the bread roll. A waiter spilled gravy on me, the dance floor was pissed up letch central. Ended up leaving early. Stings that I actually paid to go. Never been to one since!!!

first time going round to in laws for xmas. ready for a lovely xmas lunch. We didn't have much when i was growing up by my parents always did a nice roast and trimmings and put a lot of care in.
when we arrived there was no steamy kitchen and no cooking smells of delicious things like I was used to at home. It turned out PIL were doing aunt bessie's everything from the freezer and heated up in the microwave. I mean, nice of them to host but if i'd have known i'd have stayed at home. learned my lesson and I always cook now - people can come to me if they want.

Abusive relationship with my thankfully now exh. Every Christmas I managed to 'ruin it'. First year he demanded an unreasonable variety of foods, didn't lift a finger and then gave me silent treatment because dinner wasn't served at exactly the moment the Queen came on. Second year, even more unreasonable demands for the things required on his dinner. I forgot the mashed potatoes. Ruined again, bloody useless, worst Christmas ever and what are you crying now for etc... Silent treatment again. Repeat for another three years.

Now Christmas is a quiet affair with just me and DS on my years - Christmas roast pre prepped and eaten on Christmas Eve so the day is just about fun and playing with new toys. When it's not my year I eat cheese and crackers with wine for breakfast and have steak for tea. There will never again be mashed potatoes on Christmas.

@sprigatito I'm sorry you had such bad experiences growing up and glad you've found happiness at Christmas now.

Mine is nothing as bad but on our first Christmas with our 8 week old DD everybody wanted us to visit so we spent the whole day driving around people's houses and had more family come over for a late Christmas dinner which nobody volunteered any help with. I bought a duck thinking it looked a decent size but of course it shrunk so at the end of this exhausting day we were sat trying to share out a bird the size of a pigeon. Never again and ever since we have pleased ourselves and had Christmas in our own house just us, bliss!

My ex mother in law was a terrible cook but unfortunately all that side of the family liked her food. Tried to avoid going there for Christmas dinner but the one time that sticks in my mind was about 35 years ago when she served prawn cocktail starter made with rubbery tinned prawns and the driest turkey in the world that had been cooked the night before then kept warm in her new hostess trolley. Utterly revolting.

The bailiffs came round on christnas eve

What a massive arse of a man 😡 and mashed potatoes aren't an essential part of Christmas dinner anyway? Am glad you get to have peaceful Christmases now as well.

The one that didn't happen. 😀

Years ago, first Xmas with significant other. I'd been planning it for weeks. He had to work Christmas morning (police) so I put the bird in the over, all the veg prepared, house clean and decorated, all done.

I retreated to a hot scented bath with a glass of fizz before getting ready. Was lying there luxuriating and there was a loud click.

That was the main house fuse, in a wholly electric house. The one that needs an electrician. No chance of finding one of those at 11am on Christmas morning. I tried. So no heat, no light, no oven, no entertainment. By the time dp got to me at 2.30, I was munching my way through Quality Street and trying not to cry into my prosecco.

I didn't even know you could get tinned prawns 🤢

Probably the one year I went to my work's Christmas meal because I felt like I should even though my colleagues were a bunch of wankers.

The 'restaurant' was one of those places that turns the music up super loud at 8pm, fills up with young football-type men trying to get laid, and basically turns into a nightclub.

I was sat between two odious men - one roughly my age who virtue signals so fucking hard you can see it from space, and a guy who's well past retirement age but continues to work very hard for free. This isn't ageism, its about the unrelenting dedication to the job that I can't stand and don't share.

The food was mediocre, standard pub grub but gave me the absolute wild shits the next day. I mean like 4-second warning diarrohea tsumani type shits.

Reader, I did not go to a Christmas meal again.

Op that's bloody awful!
Unfortunately Xmases also hold some bad memories... The actual meal turned nasty unfortunately however everything around it was beautiful.. I've had Xmases alone, in very reduced circumstances... Very sad Xmas when dm died etc.. However inspite of my parents war at Xmas I can honestly say the worst Xmas have been with in laws.

Because they are wealthy they seem to go into restraint mode at Xmas and mil reminds us of the cost of everything (she shops at discount places).
House cold.. No music only fil talks and he's not exactly a good conversationalist... And there is something depressing being sat in a house worth over 2 million in a beautiful part of the world, eating the cheapest slimest smoke Salmon and stuff... With no music and mil talking about the cost of everything...
When it has all the "potential" to be fabulous. But the people ruin it. They ruined Xmas for me

I should imagine they don't exist now, I didn't know you could get them then, but I saw the evidence in the kitchen, hideous.

The Christmas Day when I was 12 and we had to get my sister sectioned. She developed schizophrenia that year at the age of 21. Me and my mum returned home without her (no dad in the picture) and the house felt empty, and I felt disturbed by all the horrific things she said in her psychosis.

After that, I hated Christmas every year until I had my son, who brought all the joy of it back for me.

Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Christmas 1997.
We'd only arrived late October, had met a few people but having been there longer they all went home for Christmas.
We had a Chrismas meal planned, but then the power went off. We ended up making beans on toast (gas hob electric oven) and went to bed early.
(1998 we had a bring and share BBQ at an Aussie Hi-Com accommodation block, that was much better).

Sometime late 70's, I had a bad ear infection and was in severe pain, my mum got the doctor out to me on Christmas day.

My parents had a main external fusebox go late Chrismas eve about 15 years ago. In the end 2 guys were sent out from the other side of the country on Christmas day (poor blokes) to fix it - the whole road was out. We decamped to my house with all the food rhey planned to cook, but my dad had to stay for the guys who were coming. Wasn't an awful christmas and lots of laughs, but memorable.

A Christmas night out where the meal was a turkey dinner... The week of Xmas who wants that? It was bloody awful. The entertainment was worse.. Hid in the rose bushes in the grounds and got ds to come pick me up!. Never had a bad Christmas dinner as I cook it myself!

The one where I went into premature labour mid morning. Baby born just before the Queen's Speech (which I did not watch), straight to NICU for a couple of weeks. My Xmas meal was a hospital turkey sandwich at teatime. Happy days.

(All worked out fine in the end, now my Xmas baby is eleven years old!)

I think you're onto something there...there is something especially chilling about that sort of ideological joylessness. They could have had glorious Christmases if they'd wanted to.

Uncle stood up at Christmas dinner and announced he was in love with someone else and wanted a divorce. In front of his children. To be fair to him, aunt goaded him in to confessing at that precise moment, but boy, it was… unpleasant. Thankfully all is much better now but I still think about it every year!

I think the hardest was the first after my Dad died. My Mum was with us, as she was for every Christmas after being widowed, and her quiet bravery when she was obviously grieving was so sad. Christmases without him, however lovely, were never quite the same and now she is also no longer here, there's always a tinge of melancholy.

My father, who was, I realise now, emotionally and physically abusive, threw his plate of Xmas dinner AT my teenage sister. I would have been about 8.

My older siblings used to beg my mother to leave him. She didn’t get around to it for many more years, with lots more of the same.

And wonders now why we don’t have a closer relationship with her.

Also the Christmas two months after DH died, with FIL and BIL (immunocompromised) sitting behind a sheet of plexiglass at the dinner table was… pretty grim. But in other moments, very special. I’m glad I spent it with DH’s family, there was nobody else who could have understood what I was going through.

That's awful, I'm sorry 😔 I know what you mean about your son bringing back the joy in Christmas though, it's been the same for me. The kids brought so many things back to life for me that had gone sour in my childhood.