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?

My PIL are really CF. After asking my dh what he wanted for Christmas (a £12 gadget) they ignored it and bought us a second hand fleece underblanket from a well known company that had gone into receivership 13 yrs previous. Also a can of captain morgan mixer type drink that was 5 months out of date. I got second hand tablecloths with the prices half ripped off that had been reduced 3 times from Debenhams and second hand toiletries. All these gifts were from the charity shop wearhouse that dfil works at and gets free! They asked for a tassimo coffee machine.

He'd just got a divorce from his cousin

He married his cousin?

Oneflew, your child only did what my lot do and there isn't a CF amongst them. They know there's always room at home for other people even though they're all married now and have their own homes. Christmas is always at my house and I never know who's going to turn up.

That's pretty grim, Fondant. OK, not as bad as the horrorshows some pp had in their own childhoods, but the selfishness and thoughtlessness, and how miserable you must have felt for your own family...

Radley, i think i might be half yetti- havnt seen a razor near my leggies for months and my hairy-dog-chin is wayyy past plucking. But i dont think im a CF, i leave that to my neighbour thanks for a very brilliant thread

Can't recall any particular CF examples except from a few situations that left me absolutely speechless that somebody could even think about such suggestions
Elephants and AllRoads big hugs to you for surviving and just like one of you said - having a truly shit parent ( worse if both of them) shows you exactly what not to do/say to your own kids.

I have a group of friends who do a Christmas get-together every year and almost every year it’s me who ends up having to organise it. The emails have already started: ‘so what are we doing this year?’ etc. and I want to scream because if they want to do something so damn much then why don’t they organise it themselves? They basically mean ‘so what are you organising for us this year Frieda?’ but they won’t actually say that, which is just maddening. I feel so taken for granted. I’m not their bloody social secretary and it’s not like I have any more time on my hands than the rest of them, they just can’t be arsed.

I keep getting group emails with vague statements like ‘ooh we should probably book something soon!’ and yet when I send a list of possible restaurants and ask if anyone else has any ideas I just get deafening silence back.

Basically they all just want someone else (i.e. me) to do it and I’m a bit sick of it this year!

Remembered your shagzilla thread Radley - didn't realise you were the same OP.

Loads of CF'ery from my MIL over the years. Insisted that we stayed with her whenever we visited (we don't live near to family) never bothered to do anything to prepare. Would turn up and have to immediately clean and go shopping as no food in and house filthy (ex would complain and bitch but not much help with the hard work) this is with small DC's. Worst one was we arrived on 23rd Dec to stay for Christmas- expected to have to go shopping etc as usual. When we arrived mil announced that her oven had been broken for ages (this is the oven I was supposed to be cooking full Christmas dinner in). Had to go out and buy a new fucking cooker and try and get it delivered on Christmas Eve. She spent a fortune on presents so it wasn't that she couldn't have sorted it just knew we would do it for her. I insisted that as we'd had to spend £375 (cheapest cooker we could find) on her we would have to buy my parents a much bigger present otherwise she would have lorded it over them with loads of 'my son bought me a cooker' not why we'd been fucking blackmailed into it.

My parents on the other hand have done some weird shit of their own not exactly CF but my S is the golden child. I have 2 DD's, my B has 1 DD my S has no children. One Christmas my eldest (didn't have the youngest at that time) wanted 2 Disney character toys. My parents said they wanted to buy them, they also bought something nice for my ex, I received a plastic Filofax maximum cost £5. My S got a pearl necklace and a mobile phone for her presents. Had a lot of unfairness growing up but rarely this blatant. When I said why was it that she'd had presents umpteen times what mine and B's cost they announced that they spent the same on each of us (me, S & B) but our shares (me and B) had to cover cost of presents for our DC and partners too.

I'm a Christmas CF a few years ago, we had an office secret santa, we all travelled to a restaurant about 4 miles from our office for a Christmas meal and to exchange gifts. One colleague had to 'nip to town' very obvious he was going to buy a last minute ss present. His gift ended up being for me, it was a nice toiletrie set. All good, but a few days later ex-BIL and ex-SIL came round to exchange children's gifts, they made it very obvious it was kids only and adults weren't doing gifts. Ex husband went ballistic that I hadn't bought his brother and his wife a gift (he knew it was kids only and they'd have nothing for us, he hated his brother and it was some weird one upmanship) I dug out an unopened boxed bottle of whiskey for ex BIL and wrapped my colleague' secret santa gift to me for ex-SIL she made such a fuss about not getting us something in return, I felt terrible!

I can’t top that either OP, not many others. I must be blessed somehow 😁

Mother in law waited until a week before Xmas to casually tell us she wasn't hosting us for Xmas as arranged she'd decided to go see her other son. We had a 3 year old who was seriously ill and a newborn and off she trotted. I could honestly have throttled her.

Do you think people who have been mean and tight ever have a private moment when they think about what they're like? To be so ungenerous (I don't just mean money wise) and miserable to their own families, especially at Christmas! My mother has pulled some stunts over the years and I like to think that just occasionally, in the middle of the night, she has a little uncomfortable moment about how her actions and words might affect others. (Or is that me being mean?)

Great thread. I received an M and S scarf one year from an elderly aunt. It wasn't my taste, but not wanting to offend her I secretly took it back to exchange. The cashier explained they hadn't stocked the scarf for a number of years and wasn't able to help

Can I just add that for those whose don't support food banks, blood donations are often down over christmas, and of course there are many other charities whose donations reduce over the festive period too.

Place marking. I am loving these CF threads, they are the new parking threads

Mine is - family member invited herself to ours for Xmas as we were already cooking for other family. She told me “buy brand name coca-cola as I hate the supermarket’s own stuff” I wasn’t actually planning on getting pop at all, but caved and bought a 2-litre bottle. She drank the whole thing and asked for more! When I told her there was no more she sulked and went to get some from a garage that was open. She didn’t bring anything, not even a card, and never said thank you for the food.

Another time SIL and her DH came to ours for Xmas dinner, which was at 2pm. They only had tiny slivers of meat and a couple of pieces of veg. When I asked if they wanted more they said no as they were going to his mum’s for dinner straight after this and didn’t want to be rude by not eating much at hers was the first I knew about it. I hate food waste and had I known that I’d have bought less.

His mum lives 20 minutes away and text to say dinner would be ready early so they left half way through the main course. They even left the prevents we bought them as they were in such a rush to leave. It was really weird. But SIL is obsessed with pleasing them because they’re very rich

Not if they’re Narcissists Redbull

You Radley are awesome! Just read Shagzilla thread...

I’m in awe at how many friends you seem to have! So many that you need a Whatsapp group...! I wish! I have two who slag me off at every opportunity they get and never ever bother to see me. Sadly though they’re all I’ve got! X

One is a very tight CF actually. Always asking me to buy things before I pop round (once in a blue moon I get an invite for ‘half an hour!’) yet never get paid back. Then one Christmas, despite the hundreds I have spent on her, her husband & DD over the years, I finally get a present. A lovely big Hamper!! Or so I thought. A shoe box, full of whatever she could find in her cupboards that she didn’t want anymore....

Here is a positive story about cheeky fuckers.

We have moved back to Australia after years overseas. My son has made friends with this awesome kid around the corner. His parents are fantastic and I keep bumping into them. We bonded when comparing notes (and laughing uproariously about - because it's laugh or go nuts) our awful, CF families and have decided to have a family-free Christmas together.

We know we will all have a relaxing time, and can get as shickered as we like, because no driving will be done by anyone! (We also have a pact that if family turns up uninvited (known to happen) at one house, we relocate to the other!!!)

to everyone who had shitty childhood experiences.

This happened to a relative:

They were given a present (£70 or so) by their sibling. The sibling told them they were regifting it because they didn’t want it themselves. The receiver of the gift thought this was an odd thing to say but accepted it graciously. A few days later the receiver’s DW gets a message asking for £40 towards the cost of the gift because it was worth £40 more than they’d usually spend!!!! Because the receiver and DW are the loveliest people in the world and unaccustomed to CFery they actually paid!!!

Christmas as a child involved hours in a pub, then tipsy parents trying to cook dinner, huge huge row, dinner would usually get called off, we'd be thankful for any chocolates bought.

The year we got bikes, we had the usual presents that Mum would get every year. I think we asked excitedly is there anything else, she rared up and called us ungrateful cheeky fuckers, which left us stunned. She'd hid the bikes at a neighbours, but to be honest after the outburst we didn't really get any joy out of it. IIRC I wanted to ride off and just not have to deal with the annual Christmas shenanigans.

It would always usually be Mum that started the arguing, us kids would be sat on the stairs wondering if dinner was going to make it or not.

My mum and dad used to send a big box of Christmas goodies to a family of cousins who were always a bit threadbare. One year she made a really big plum pudding for them on top of the usual things that got put in the box. It was big enough to feed all twelve of them, many of them teenage boys - about twice the size of your normal pud, if not three times.

One of the older cousins was a fresher in university and mum by chance bumped into him in town one day in February. She asked about the plum pudding, hoped there had been enough, etc. Cousin told her that aunt and uncle had had a big New Years bash and had served mum's Christmas pudding to all their appreciative guests. The cousins had not even had a lick of it.

We had visited them once and found all the cousins eating breakfast cereal in the kitchen for dinner, elbows out to fend off poachers, but mum had not suspected that aunt and uncle would stiff the children even at Christmas.

My sister has bought me jewellery At Xmas, not my taste at all (large blingy fake diamonds) which I had thanked her for as that’s what you do.
She usually wants a surprise and is normally very pleased with what I get her. One year I was very proud of myself as I had got her something I thought she would really like but upon opening it was clear she did not like it. It was a real tumbleweed moment.
Then I find out she had been complaining to my cousins about it and they’re talking about it on Arsebook.
I couldn’t believe she got me some cheap shitty presents that were totally not me but then had the gall to publicly moan the one time I got it wrong. Just thank me and keep it to yourself like I’ve been doing year in year out!
She wants a surprise again this year

Some of these are hilarious- but some are so, so sad! 🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺🌺