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?

Had a stuffed turkey breast one year, a most horrific smell came from it when cooking. The stuffing was bad! Didn't have turkey that year!

Had a power cut one Christmas. Had to finish cooking on a cooking stove

Was sick over Christmas when I was 10. Couldn't eat or open any presents!

The one where I was heavily pregnant with DS and we had to go to my MILs house. Cold, filthy house, hot water for 10 minutes at 4.30pm.

She spent half the day FaceTiming his ex wife, cooked a multi bird roast which she called the 'slug' so often that in the end no one felt like eating it.

She gave me a pair of washing up gloves and some American tan stockings as a present saying that it was a 'sexy outfit'.

She also invited her friends round and didn't tell us that they were coming. They had brought us gifts but we had nothing for them which was very embarrassing.

We haven't been to her house to stay overnight since and said that from then on we would stay in our own home for Christmas.

Spent one Christmas Eve with my mum and step father. He was cooking for 4 adults and 4 kids. Only he seemed to think the amount of food he usually cooked for 2, would go round 8. And the chicken was under cooked. Refused to have dinner there after that and would go and get food from the chippy instead.

Oh holy fuck, that is a contender 😂

I'm sorry for those of you that had awful childhood Christmases. I hope that the big you takes good care of yourself this Christmas - on the behalf of the little you that deserved so much better.

Fil and MIL came to ours when the kids were very small for Christmas.

Did nothing to help as usual. DD was sick all over me and FIL was surprised I took a shower afterwards.

Mil pulled her face because we had a pre prepared starter.

Wtf

It’s the only time I’ve ever heard my dad (his brother) really lose his temper. He said, very quietly, “Can I talk to you in the garden please, Eric?” and then we proceeded to eat our dinner without speaking for the next 20 minutes while my dad ranted and raved outside the window 😂 I’m laughing now but it was very traumatic for my poor cousins and my lovely auntie! And, to be fair, for my uncle, who genuinely had fallen in love and was doing the right thing as far as possible by ending his (semi-arranged) marriage before anything happened.

Really worried job hunter
^

Sounds like an Adrian Mole Christmas!

The Christmas when no-one was talking to anyone. My Mum served up three fancy courses she'd worked on for days and we at the lot in silence and in 25 minutes flat.

Not a terrible meal as such, but my first boyfriend (25 years ago) invited me for Christmas with his family (in London). And I was served bread sauce for the first (and last) time ever…

The year my family tried to include absolutely everyone and their in laws and ended up sitting down to xmas dinner without my brother, who had come home from abroad, as he had fallen asleep upstairs after too much bubbly and not told anyone where he was going.

There were so many of us we had to sit in adjoining rooms and each room assumed my brother was in the other one. He laughed it off at the time but has shared subsequently how hurtful he found it no one noticed he was missing, even though he understands how it happened.

One was when DH insisted we needed to do Christmas lunch just the four of us, when normally we would spend it with extended family. It was boring as hell and the kids moaned all afternoon.

Another was when we ended up having a relative to lunch who nobody likes because they were on their own (good reason for not liking them but in the spirit of Christmas we invited them). Anyway said guest got ratarsed on red wine and upset everyone so it was a disaster.

The one the year my FIL left MIL when we'd just got married. We felt we had to go and be with her out of guilt.
DH spent Christmas Eve trying to fix the heating and lights as it transpired neither of these worked in the whole downstairs. MIL had spent the previous few months really depressed under her duvet in her bedroom so she hadn't really noticed/ cared but it was quite difficult to get in the festive spirit in the cold and dark.
The general atmosphere was one of abject misery. MIL wasn't really capable of having any conversations that weren't about what a twat FIL was.
We woke on Christmas morning to a blood curdling scream which was the sound of young teen SIL's pet rabbit having its neck broken by a fox that broke into the hutch. DH had to drive her in PJs to an OOH vet to put it out of its misery. SIL cried all day. No one much fancied stockings after that.
MIL is an awful cook but felt she ought to try. She put the sprouts on about 7am so they boiled to a mush and the whole house stank. We had to carve the turkey with a cheese knife because she usually lived on microwave meals and there were no proper knives. Similarly the oven was never used or cleaned so it belched forth black smoke and the smoke alarm kept going off.
Older teen BIL rudely sulked in his room all day refusing to come out for food or presents which made MIL scream at him and cry. The smell of cannabis was fortunately largely masked by the sprout and oven smoke smell.
I missed my lovely happy extended family Christmas really badly and sobbed down the phone to my parents and I am afraid I made DH promise we would never go there for Christmas again (we host MIL for New Year instead)

2 spring to mind, the first one being the worst.
Took 4 week old newborn dc2 abroad to see my dad with not much older dc1. Dad was in the middle of breaking up with his wife but hadn’t told us.
My stepsister asked for mayonnaise to go with her Christmas roast (not what I would choose for mine!), culminated in a huge row with dad and stepmum, he said just let her have it (to be fair it was him who had cooked the dinner so if he didn’t care…), stepmum went absolutely batshit crazy, threw her plate all over the place and packed a suitcase and left. They had friends there too. Was just altogether mortifying. Baby dc got colic and nights went on until 5am of her screaming. The house was cold and the atmosphere frosty. I just cried every day to dh that I wanted to go home!

the second which was more funny but terrible was one year we were all hungover. Mum and stepdad had friends round on Christmas Eve with friends and went to bed at 4am, my brother and I had both been out. Our little sister was maybe 2/3, brother and I were 17/21.
stepdad went through the motions of cooking Christmas dinner for the benefit of little sister and none of us could eat it. Our family Christmas photo that year still makes us howl with laughter at how dead we all looked, my sister looked radiant 😂

@sprigatito yes, so much to be grateful for and happy about but somehow so joyless and mean and miserly.

I've enjoyed Xmases much more in very teeny houses with basic decor, no gifts BUT... happy joyful people, good candle light, some effort at Dec's and good music.

Childhood Christmas was drugs, alcohol and violence. Teen Christmas was drugs and alcohol. Over a decade of Christmas' with abusive or useless men.

Now it's just me and the dc and I look forward to Christmas all year! We have a fancy breakfast, open presents, I cook exactly what we feel like eating, and then we all snuggle under a blanket to watch Christmas movies. I wish I could go back and tell 5 year old me that it gets better.

Totally outing to anyone who knows me because it is legendary!

DH, DD (then aged 14 months) and I went to visit my father and his wife. And, critically, their very violent, very unpredictable dog, who we’ll call Dickhead for the purposes of this post. I had emailed DF before going to visit saying that given Dickhead had tried to attack my nephew and given my brother had chucked Dickhead across the room and given I’d witnessed Dickhead savaging a puppy (which it would not release despite DF kicking Dickhead), that I did not want Dickhead in same room as toddling DD. DF agreed to no Dickhead.

DF’s wife had been the OW many moons ago (he secretary, what a cliche) and loathed me. I think because she hated sharing my father affections and I look very much like my mother.

Anyway, we arrive on Boxing Day for a Christmas Dinner. DF’s wife insisted that DF bring Dickhead into the room (just let him say hello, poor Dickhead). DF like the true spine donor he is agreed. Dickhead looses his shit when both DH and I demand Dickhead is removed. Bites DF, DF shouts that this is what happens if you don’t just let Dickhead do what Dickhead wants. Which causes a huge row culminating in DF telling me that Dickhead is far more important to him that either me or my DD could ever be. So we left.

And I’ve never spoken to him since, 15 years on, save for at my brother’s funeral when he pretended he couldn’t see me and gave an extra long eulogy which he omitted me from despite the fact that my brother and I were extremely close (not least from dealing with DF and the abusive witch he chose to marry).

That was probably the worst Christmas I’ve had.

I was 10 and my dad had died six months earlier. Our next-door neighbours were nice people and the husband was a chef so we were invited to theirs. Christmas was already pretty dark. The first Christmas without your daddy when you're a child is hard. So, we go next door and the chef is absolutely and utterly bladdered. We're waiting ages for food and it's three courses, soup, main, and dessert. (I nearly wrote desert which would have been more apt). The soup was supposed to be French Onion soup, if I'm remembering correctly. It was years before I tried French onion soup again which was a shame as it's lovely. Drunk chef's French onion soup tasted like sewage smells. It was rank but we were guests and by now my mum is also drunk and my brother and I, and the couples two boys are not allowed to say anything at all. We are to be grateful that we're being fed. The main was a traditional turkey roast. Every last bit of it was burnt, including the gravy. Everything tasted a bit off too, or maybe that was the taste of sewage smell that was still in our poor mouths. I know I was quietly crying and got told off.

Thankfully, he was too annoyed/drunk to bother with dessert because we, the children, were not grateful enough. My brother and I went back home. Mum stayed to drink more. It was the worst Christmas of my life and it sort of ruined Christmas for me. I'm always hoping that a dream Christmas will happen but I don't trust that it will - it won't because I don't even know what that dream is and my expectations could never be met - and so I have a love/hate relationship with the season. Love, reading Christmas chic-lit and watching the most awful Christmas movies on Channel 5. Like the adverts, get carried away by the lead up but all along I know I'm on to a loser. That is all on you, drunk chef who served us sewage for soup. It is all on you.

Yeah
My childhood ones weren't great once I got older
I celebrate Advent the season rather than one day...takes the pressure off I find x

Last year I got the call at 10pm on Christmas Eve from my sister that my step mum had died. It was expected but not imminent. One of my girls woke up at 5am, it was a very long day catering for (lovely) in-laws while we all pretended it hadn't happened so as not to ruin Christmas for the kids.

Alternately, the Christmas after my mum died when I was 10. All the neighbours clearly noticed my dad hadn't been able to pull himself together to create a Christmas for me so they combined resources to create a pile of presents and fought over whose house we were going to for lunch.

The worst for us was Christmas 2018. Had plans to take my elderly Mother out for lunch on Christmas Day. Went over for her ( 30 minutes drive) and she wasn't well. Also had a rash. Had to call an ambulance for her. Ambulance people told us just to go and get our booked and paid for Christmas Dinner as they would be a while taking her to A & E.

So the rest of the day was spent a) driving back home for our meal, and bolting it b) driving back to my Mum's House to collect stuff for her as they were going to keep her in c) driving 30 minutes to the hospital. Then being faced with a very fed up Hospital Doctor who asked, very crossly, why my Mother was there 😡Erm - because the Paramedics thought she needed to be checked over and A & E obviously agreed because they had admitted her? Turned out she had pneumonia and was in for a number of days......

I was feeling a bit sorry for myself this evening but holy moley these stories are awesome. You are all wonderful!
Many thanks for sharing.
You have cheered me right up.

Wow, they sound utterly toxic. People like that don't deserve to have grandchildren (nor to own animals)

She gave me a pair of washing up gloves and some American tan stockings as a present saying that it was a 'sexy outfit'.

I mean that's both awful and one of the most hilarious presents I've ever heard of.

My dad had died in the autumn when my youngest baby was only 8 weeks old. He was 4 months old on Christmas Day, still waking at night and breastfeeding.

My divorced MIL had accepted every Xmas dinner invitation from her 3 sons and joked about being like the vicar of Dibley but it meant I absolutely HAD to meet timings to cook Xmas dinner or she'd be late for her next dinner with BIL and SIL, who I was afraid of pissing off. She arrived early and gave kids presents while I was stuck in the kitchen meaning I missed them opening and felt like a skivvy while everyone else sat on my sofa having a lovely time.

My husband has been going on for weeks about having pigs in blankets combined with toad in the hole - there is a reason why that's not really a thing but I tried.

I was hot, sweaty, sad and anxious.
I got the whole greasy sorry mess on the table a mere 15 minutes behind schedule, sat down and just cried so hard I couldn't stop for what felt like a long time.

I've never cooked Christmas dinner on 25 December since.