To ask about your weirdest Christmas (lighthearted)

[SorryCantBeArsed]

Had this conversation at work today and got me wondering about other peoples. Mine is... A good few years ago I was invited to spend Christmas with friends, my then ih

Sorry, !?? is supposed to be a smile!

Working 7-3, driving 2 hours to outlaws, before even getting chance to get out my uniform I was presented with a microwaved Xmas dinner with a side of pickled onions as I once said I liked them, then intently watched whilst I ate it and as soon as I had finished was made to play 3 hours of party games. My idea of hell

Mines weird because it was grim.

I'd always been used to happy family Christmases and this was the first one that broke the mould.

My dad passed away on Dec 21 st. I tried to persuade mum to have the funeral on dec 24 but she wouldn't hear of it. So we mourned dad, rallied round my mum.

Then bizarrely tried to resurrect a Christmas day, with dinner, tv when we all felt glum then just as you are starting to get used to the new reality on the 30 th we had the funeral.

Was just horrible. I feel for anyone who loses a loved one right in Christmas knowing what we went through.

Even the next Christmas wasn't that brilliant as its the first well second really without dad.

I found out my husband had been cheating just a few days before my extended family (7) arrived to stay for 2 weeks over xmas/ new year... it was their holiday they had been planning all year. I had to act like all was normal when my world was falling apart.
I kept it up until new years eve...

And my stepmum insisted she didn't want a traditional xmas lunch and spontaneously cancelled the arrangements i had made for a lunch in a beautiful restaurant (owned by a friend who has never entirely forgiven me) stepmum and dad bought chicken burgers and made my husband bbq them...shittest xmas lunch in history, i didn't have energy to argue. I buggered off to a hotel for a night the next day, had a breakdown then had to literally pick myself up and return.

the whole xmas holiday is a blur of swallowed hysteria and in the middle were my kids only 2 and 4, i forgot to make decorations and mince pies..just on zombie autopilot. i still feel guilty and overcompensate

I think the most surreal was my DH's first Christmas with my mum's family.
First, we learned that DAunt#1 and family, who lived in the same small town as DGran, had got a cheap deal to the US and would be spending Christmas abroad while we kept DGran company.

Then the plane we were supposed to catch was grounded by fog and we had to travel by coach and ferry - taking a day and a half instead of a couple of hours to get there.

Then we realised that we'd got a cheap deal on the hotel we stayed in because it had officially closed. Although the hotel wasn't staffed any more, there was a note telling us we could still use the keys to let ourselves into our rooms for the duration of our stay - "just post them through the letterbox when you leave!"
The heating was dodgy and the kitchen was locked, so we had nothing to eat or drink apart from the tiny teamaking facilities in the room and a couple of stale rolls at the reception desk.

We then realised that although we'd booked a hotel near DGran's house (which wasn't particularly near anything else), DAunt#2 had decided at the last minute to have her to stay (but hadn't told Mum or DAunt#1 about this) - DAunt#2 lives 10 miles from my parents' house. DAunt#3 was away skiing and wouldn't be back until Christmas day.

DMum and DDad got food poisoning and spent Christmas in bed. Meanwhile the town had had a big 'keep Christmas for the family' campaign and closed all its shops and restaurants on the 23rd December - meaning that DH and I lived on Quavers from the hotel's remaining vending machine for two days.

Boxing day at DAunt #3's house felt like a liberation..

Well, not weird but definitely sad and very surreal. 11 days before Christmas, 2 years ago, we arrived home to find that my 15 year old son had taken his own life. We held his funeral the day before Christmas Eve, on Christmas Eve itself his ashes were delivered in a box by the funeral director. On Christmas Day we sat around the table with a 'take out turkey' that our friends had organized and delivered. My sons ashes sat in his place at the table with us. Christmas will always be a sad event in our house, even though it was once the most joyous of occasions and because we have younger children, we will always try to make it as happy as we can. His ashes came out again last year for Christmas dinner, as they will this year. 4 days ago, on the run up to the 2nd anniversary of my sons death, my husband left me, moved out of our home and into a hotel (great!). My eldest son and my parents will fly out on the anniversary of my sons death (we're overseas) but during the daytime I will take my 2 youngest to their brothers tree and plaque that their school planted and we will place some orange flowers (Orange was his favorite colour). We will come home and I will plaster on a smile, just like I always do. Then I will crack open the champagne (lots of it) and toast my sons life. Sometimes, if I thought I could get away with it, I would carry his ashes around with me all the time. I would be like a cat lady or a snake lady but instead I would be Ashes Lady ...

So sorry to lower the festive tone (and there are some funny - if not cringeworthy - stories here) but you asked for weird Christmas stories and this is mine (not sure if it's weird, just the me wanting to carry his ashes bit). Merry fucking Christmas hey?

P.s. Seriously hope I haven't killed the thread, I was enjoying reading it ...

Oh darling Louster, that's horrendous. Fucking horrendous.

When you mention about wanting to carry your boy's ashes round have you heard about the jewellery and tattoos that can be created with ashes of your loved one?
Wishing you peace this christmas

I have Queen but I don't feel ready just yet to do anything with his ashes. I do carry his photo and a lock of his (very curly) hair in a locket around my neck (I can't ever open it though, it took so long to get his bloody hair in there!) 😊 Thank you for the reminder though. One day ...

Thank you, by the way.

We had a Christmas with a powercut where we ended up eating Pringles and the pre-baked ham cold for Christmas dinner. The turkey went off and my dad decided the best way to get rid of it would be to dump it in the sea.
That was a quite lovely but odd Christmas - we sat around in the dark singing carols some evenings. I was below drinking age but there was lots of drink for the adults, I believe!

Oh gosh Louster, I missed your post - so sorry for your loss.

💐

How awful Louster don't know what to say.

My only bad Christmas was with my ILs. They arrived and MIL was spoiling for a fight. Everything DH said was shot down, even innocuous things. We didnt rise to it. Christmas dinner was eaten in silence except for me and DH blabbering to make conversation. ILs didnt speak just ate in silence. To break silence I said how grateful I was they were having the DC for my sisters child free wedding. MIL then said "oh no we will not being doing that we might have paperwork to do that weekend" (weekend in July this was Christmas day). I said "oh no thats going to make things very difficult for us" (ILs do nothing for us ever this was the one thing we had ever asked them to do). Then MIL got really weirdly angry and said that I had been rude ?!

Then FIL walked into another room and wouldn't come out and put his head in his hands over MILs bad behaviour. It was awful! The DC were little and really confused as DH and I never have rows so they didnt understand what was going on. After that the ILs "wouldn't speak" to us for 6 months and slammed the phone down if we rang. We never did work out what it was we had done wrong. We don't see them anymore funnily enough.

Oh Louster, I'm so sorry for your loss

2 really stand out to me.

One was abroad the holiday from hell and we got superwasted in Xmas eve, culminating in being in a pool at 6am and sleeping the whole day (one if the few days it was hot and didn't piss down)

The other was when I was early 20's and decided I would sample one of my pressies - vodka - at 11am. I was shit faced by dinner and passed out by 4pm

Despite both tales involving me being pissed I honestly don't make a habit of it or I handle my booze better in my 30's

My son was born at 26 weeks just before Christmas a few years ago, so we spent Christmas Day staring through an incubator at this tiny little skinned rat and just willing him to survive and drinking champagne from a bottle of Lucozade as the nurses pretended not to notice. There was a teddy bear on top of the incubator donated by Harrods which was about twice his size!

Happily he is absolutely fine and very much looking forward to Christmas well, presents this year

Gave birth to Ds2 on Xmas eve nearly 10 years ago :)

As if xmas that year wasn't mad enough ds1 (2) then fell down a whole flight of stairs and Dp sent the rest of the morning in a&e whilst I stayed at home with ds2.

Xmas dinner was pizza and chips...classy

Any Christmas with FIL but one stands out.

He is very attention-seeking so we all just ignored him one Christmas day when we thought he'd had too much to drink and was slurring his words. We only took notice when DD told us she'd heard a crash in the bathroom and he was found on the floor. Cue MIL & DH discussing whether to put him in the bath to sober him up and I suggested that we should call an ambulance instead. It turned out he'd had a stroke.

DS was 6 weeks old so I was the only sober one and took MIL to the hospital behind the ambulance. We got back about 3am and about 30 mins after I'd fallen asleep, DS woke up for a feed.

FIL made a full recovery. The following year, in memory of the previous Christmas day, he took himself off to the garage and lay on the cold floor until we went to see where he was. Apparently he'd felt hot and light-headed. His elderly mum was there that year and got the hump that we weren't fussing over him. So they were both in a sulk for the rest of the day.

He also goes into an almighty sulk if you buy him anything he hadn't asked for. Which makes for good entertainment if MIL takes a punt on something.

Louster I'm so sorry. You sound almost numb about your DH leaving, unsurprisingly. Do you have a thread here for some support, even just thru the ether?
Dowser it must have been awful. It's never the same again either.

Mine will be recognisable if I have friends that read and post here.
The year my mum died, 5yrs ago just before I turned 30, I made the mistake of having probably far too honest a conversation with my aunt, my mum's sister, about how Christmas had been for me growing up. My mum was a difficult woman at times who liked a drink, and we would drive 200 miles to stay with my aunts family. Mum would then basically bitch about my aunt and her family just out of their earshot. As alcohol loosens the tongue this would get worse. From the age of 11/12 I felt very responsible for my aunt not hearing her and not being hurt. I guess, my mum was very unhappy and as I became an older teenager I really hated Christmas.
My aunt was furious when I told her this and I was there to be furious with. It was immature to have told her, but I was grieving. Since then I have not been welcome in their house on Christmas Day. That first year without mum, I went to church on Christmas morning, with terrible falling down tights that I've never forgotten! and spent a peaceful but sad afternoon watching favourites on iplayer that I'd missed.

Gladly the year after I met my now DH.
Families, eh?

One year I got out of hospital on the 24th after having ds2 a month early. I say got out, it was more like I asked if we could go and they were busy preparing discharge papers and a million other things so I cut all the tags off and legged it. Hope no one go tin trouble for that . In my drug addled state I thought I was doing them a favour. Had to stop off at a shop on the way and grab whatever was in stock for ds1. Luckily he was young so didn't have his heart set on anything. The next day was spent in a haze at my parents who had to make their dinner stretch to a further 3 people, luckily my mum always bought a huge turkey so it was fine.

That year seemed to set the tone as there have been incidents every year since.

There was the year we had friends coming round but I was heavily pregnant again and the smell of raw meat turned my stomach....I found out it also turned DH's stomach.
It took us 4 hours to prep the turkey and get it in the oven as we had to separate every 30 seconds to throw up. Friends luckily thought it was hilarious.

Every year someone has ended up either in A&E or emergency dentists Christmas day or Boxing day.

The horrible year we had been told Mums organs were shutting down and it was only a matter of days/hours they couldn't say which. She held on till the 30th December.
Oh and the year Ds1 went to granddads who then ranted at him not to be a dickhead like his dad. Ds1 had been unbeknownst to us unaware DH wasn't his biological dad. He had his fathers surname and we were waiting for him to ask the questions when he was ready. Turns out that despite having memories of him and having his surname he'd never given it any thought so it was quite a shock.

Woke up on boxing day to find a tsunami flooding my beach hut.
I had to run, literally for my life, and had no idea whether my friends were all right who were staying further up the coast. It took 3 days for us to find each other but they were fine. They were convinced I'd drowned as we'd all been plastered the night before and my drunken sleeping is unrousable.
My hut had vanished completely when they managed to get there.
They even told my family and had tried to find my body for them, a horrid horrid task.

Thousands and thousands and thousands of people did drown though.

DM got drunk, argued with my dad as usual, crawled up the stairs as my GM (her MIL) arrived, shouted abuse at my dad from upstairs & called my gran a "dick face".

Dad can't cook so we had pasta for Christmas dinner. With after eights as pudding.

Gotta love my mum.

Oooo just thought of another one.

Prepping boxing day dinner for us and friends. Just about to serve when I hear an almighty crash. The ceiling had fallen in on the dining room. Dust and rubble everywhere.

On dds first Christmas I had surgery on Christmas Day . NOBODY was there when I woke up after surgery then my dm turned up drunk to the hospital because she hates hospitals. The nurses were the most depressing bunch id ever met and I didn't even get Christmas dinner at the hospital .

I'm not bitter about the whole experience at all . I did find out I was pregnant with dc2 the day after I got home though , so it wasn't all bad.