Can we start a CF Christmas thread?

[AllRoadsLeadBackToRadley]

Because:

I need some light relief

I'll start. DS (nc now) once texted me on Christmas Eve to tell me (not ask) that her and DN were coming for Christmas...and staying for three weeks!

There was a list of instructions with the text, including:

I'll be sleeping in your room, and you, DH and DN can all share with DD, because I've had him all year alone and need a break. (She actually told me she was giving me a chance to prove that I was a better aunty than a sister!)

There'll be none of that (insert horrible racist word beginnig with P) shit that you normally cook. I'm allergic to hot food.

DN wakes up at 5.30. He needs breakfast within a half hour of waking, or else he won't be able to poo later in the day.

I need picking up at 6.00 at the latest, so you can give him tea.

Then she had the nerve to text DH and tell him I'd agreed to it, and she was ready to be collected! DH left work, and it wasn't until I'd been waiting in the rain for him to pick me up as arranged, and called him, that I dound out he was halfway to where she lived! (30 miles from us).

I'd just ignored the text.

He came straight back, I sent a "lol, dream on!" text, cue months- MONTHS- of PA fbk statuses about family not being everything, etc, etc...

Anyone else?

Allroads: I like the Reverse Advent Calendar idea of putting an appropriate item in a box each day and taking them to a food bank just before Christmas. DD is going to do it too.

DM gave me a faggy, "preloved" dressing gown in an ancient Tesco carrier bag.

She told DH she hadn't got him anything because she knew he didn't like presents.

Me too! And I've texted/messaged my nearest and dearest this year asking them to shove sruff into the food bank drive at Tesco instead of giving me gifts. If you've read the paint/cat pee thread, you'll know I have WAY too much stuff as it is, so not exactly a noble thing! 😅

Can I ask what you've put in yours? I took a pack of bakewell tarts out in case of nut allergies, and I'd like to add some vegan/veggie stuff too (not forcing it on anyone- just that it's not only meat eaters who find themsenves on their asses sometimes). Any ideas?

Allroads - the only fixed part of the lucky dip was that Santa (retired member of staff) always ceremoniously handed out the first present or two. Traditionally a male member of senior staff got a pair of stockings.

The longer I'm on MN, the more I realise that my parents really weren't so bad.

The crap families DO make fab threads though, don't thry? So they have some uses! 😅

Rings a bell bufin - my mum told my extended family not to get us Easter eggs because we 'didn't like chocolate'. I don't believe anyone believed her, but they didn't bother anyway.

Starting on December 1st with a pack of toothbrushes. I'm thinking of small Christmas pudding, toiletries, Christmassy biscuits, and the usual cans, packets etc. Especially naice items on offer too.

Slightly batty DCuz sent me a book from her shelf with the flyleaf torn out.

My actual mother. Ruined Christmas many times, used to dread it as a child typical Christmas goes something like....

Spend 23rd/24th December following my agitated and disorganized mother around the town center gathering gifts for my siblings and extended family with all the enthusiasm and goodwill of a parasitic wasp. Swearing and cursing about how much she hates Christmas and us little shits don't deserve it etc..
Gets paralytic by 4pm Christmas eve. I wrap the presents, decorate tree,prepare veg and make mince pies while she sleeps. I'm 10. Xmas day opens with small excited children opening gifts and something festive on the TV so far so good. Stepfather goes to collect his mother(nanny to my younger sibs) who's joining us for lunch. Mother despises this and slags the poor women off behind her back . Mother starts on the sherry about 10:30am. By 1300 she's had an argument with stepfather, my older brother and rung my Dad (her ex hub) to call him a c*. She passes out before serving lunch. Stepfather and I dish up lunch and make sure the small children and nanny are well entertained and enjoy a peaceful afternoon. I always give my daughter a magical, peaceful non pissed xmas and eagerly await my sons first this year. Mother will not be attending.

some crazy CFs out there!! Can I just remind everyone that if you are doing a reverse advent calendar for a food bank or refuge,these are best done mid Nov to mid Dec and dropped off approx a week to ten days before Christmas, so that they have time to sort and distribute the items before Christmas. If you drop items off only a day or two before Christmas they will still be gratefully received, but may not get to the people who need them, in time for them to enjoy them on Christmas Day.

Good point.

ifihadonlyknown

Years ago I got a friend something for Christmas and she asked me to take it back and get something else or just give her the money so she could buy something herself that she actually liked.

I was shocked by her and didn't really know how to react. She'd got me shit presents every year and I'd just been polite about it. I didn't really bother with getting her a present after that. She had form for being a CF though. I've mentioned her on MN several times.

I'm not sure this counts as a Christmas CF but many years ago I was a (unpaid voluntary) trustee of a London women's shelter and the (employed) bookkeeper was quite young (maybe 21) and from up north and couldn;t afford to get home for Christmas due to the train prices.

I felt awful and offered to have her at ours for Christmas, so she duly came and ate our food and we bought her some token presents and we all generally made her feel very welcome.

We subsequently found out that she had been covering up payments that hadn't been made (hiding letters chasing the payments addressed to the Director) and in all likelihood had taken the money herself. We could never prove this but it at best it was incompetence deliberately covered, up at worst embezzlement.

I still feel like an idiot and it was 25 years ago!

@ifihadonlyknown as someone who grew up with lovely Christmases, and is determined to do the same for my DC, that makes me so sad. Well done you for breaking the cycle .

Mild by comparison, but an extended family member mentioned to DH in about September that she had bought a board game that she would be bringing to ours at Christmas.

We usually host Xmas and are fine with it, it was just a bit, um presumptuous

I've a cousin who tends to send slightly odd presents (we suspect she just grabs an armful at the nearest jumble sale and sorts them out into roughly what will do for whom eg slippers that are not quite the right size, horrid kitchenware, cheap scarves) but no one really minds.

Can't compete with AllRoads but we had one particularly CF Christmas with my (usually well behaved) MIL. For a variety of reasons we agreed to have Christmas day with her but provide and cook all the food/drink etc so that she could have everything she wanted (no travel, no cooking, DC around her etc- she'd had a crap year so we wanted to do something nice for her). Despite not being that well off we also bought her a fairly expensive present that we knew she really wanted (spent more on this than the DC presents and everyone else in the family got token gifts only).

After all the presents/cards etc were opened she spent ages checking through the rubbish before we put it outside and throughout the day asked several times if we'd left anything in the car etc. At her request we stayed with her very late (but didn't stay over, as she wanted a lie in in the morning that the DC would not allow). Not long after we got home (after midnight) one of her friends called DH to say that we had really upset MIL and she couldn't believe how thoughtless we'd been. We'd allowed DC1 to write her card/gift tags etc and she had not put my/DHs name on them. So as far as MIL was concerned she had not had a present or card from DH. Apparently she was waiting all day, expecting that there was a big surprise present to be revealed at any point. Even when we explained that obviously the presents/card were from all of us (what with 4 and 2 year olds not having much access to cash etc) she refused to speak to DH for days. We now rather pointedly get her a small present from each of us.

Is there anyone who actually likes secret santa?

Not on the same level of CFness as some, but I had a 🤔experience with an office world cup sweepstake a while back. IME usual way these run is all the stakes are returned to the winner and runners-up as prizes. On this occasion, the bloke running it decided to announce the prize...: a bottle of wine for the winner. Of course, the winner might not even have wanted wine (and being a very ‘diversity-conscious ‘ workplace, I’ m surprised this wasn’t considered.) Worse, though, was that the stakes had totalled over £30. I’m pretty sure the wine hadn’t cost anything like that. And there was no other prize. It was all just really odd, because while I can imagine why someone might find it worthwhile to stiff their colleagues for £100 + points (upthread), the gain here was a fraction of that.

When I was about 6/7 years old I had a go at doing some gardening and planted a little fir tree in the garden. It grew really well and I was rather proud of it. So roll on Christmas, and to save money my dad (without asking if I minded) chopped down my little tree and put it in the living room for a christmas tree. He promised he would buy me another one to plant (but he didn't). This was the year before he went out and bought a christmas tree the size of a cat and stood it on a little side table - my younger sister just bawled her eyes out that it wasn't a 'proper' christmas tree, so he ended up going out and getting another bigger one.

In hindsight my parents were strapped for cash, so I can't blame him for being frugal really. (However that doesn't excuse the time he used my orange Sooty balloon for target practise in the garden. He is actually the best Dad ever but I was pretty mad about the sad demise of my tree and my Sooty balloon).

Shocked at the behaviour of people’s families. Some of the stories made me feel really sad.

The non-family story that made my jaw drop was the one about the cheeky Boots card present buying colleagues. The brass neck of them! I was aghast when I read it. Who deliberately collides to defraud their colleagues then acts as if they did it as a favour?? I hope word got around!

I had a similar, but not as bad, experience. A team of ten I worked with decided to go out for dinner in December, and I was invited. Very nice. The woman organising it chose the restaurant, which was on the expensive side, and said that her husband wanted to join us: fine.

On the night, before the bill came, I heard this woman and her husband talking in low tones about ‘using the card’. I wondered why they were whispering, it was weird. You wouldn’t need to be furtive about paying a restaurant bill with a card, would you?

The rest of us were ready to pay with cash or cards, but I just got an odd feeling about this couple. They had a word with the waiting staff then told us that they wanted to pay separately, at the maitre d’s desk, after we’d all paid. They collected up the cash, and those paying by card did so at the table, leaving the remaining bill with the couple. They encouraged us to go through to the bar area, where they’d join us later.

I hung back, and watched what happened next. They took the bill over to the maitre d’s desk and appeared to be having a discussion with him. He pulled out a calculator. They handed over some of the cash they’d collected from the rest of the group but I didn’t see them make a card payment.

Because I am the suspicious type (and an accountant...do not cross us, our mild exteriors are deceptive) I went to the maitre d after the couple had walked into the bar and asked for a copy of the bill “for VAT” (bollocks, of course, but what did he know?). He obliged, at which point I discovered that they had a dining card that got them 15% off the cost of any meal taken at that restaurant, irrespective of the number of diners.

So the woman and her husband had deliberately chosen that restaurant because they knew that they could get a free meal at the expense of everybody else. We’d all paid full price, and that greedy pair had actually made a profit from us as well as getting a posh dinner for free. The small amount of cash they’d handed over to the maitre d had been a tip; they kept the rest of the cash they had collected from us.

I am a terrible person, because I made sure that I showed that bill to everybody else the next day.

COLLUDES, not collides! Flipping auto correct.

Nettle, you are a brilliant person, because you made sure that you showed that bill to everybody else the next day. I salute you!

An ex friend arrived to stay empty handed, despite talking about how many free gifts she had to give out (imagine she worked in a chocolate shop or similar).
A week of sitting on her arse drinking (a lot) of our booze and being fed nice meals. All the other guests had contributed something (booze, gifts, cooked for the group, etc).
On the last night we went out for a meal and CF kept quiet at bill time before putting down the exact money and declaring she wouldn't pay a penny more than what she had eaten. She wasn't even embarrassed, it didn't seem to occur to her that we had all subsidised her all week. It's not about the money (can't have been more than £10), but the attitude.
She wasn't short of money and was prone to spending big on herself. I should've cut her off right then but it sadly took 5 more years to work out that she was a user.