Tales of family Christmas from hell?

[HTH1]

Following on from the guests from hell thread, please tell me about your worst family Christmas from hell. Hopefully that will make me happier about it just being a v small Christmas this year (all family away or dead) and would love to hear your experiences

The strange thing for me, I could take something from all these sad stories, except the public transport... And that would also reflect aspects of my xmasses but as awful as some parts were, the day also had infusions of wonderful memories.

However, inspite of the dark sides... I never felt depressed. I felt hopeless, angry, frustrated... But not sort of flat depressed...

Later on in life spending Xmas in dh parents home.. Which should have been a blast, no drink issues from anyone, plenty of money, comfortable home etc... It was those xmasses that actually made me feel actually depressed and sucked every ounce of joy out of the day.

Just with their joyless money obsessed outlook.

My worst Christmas 3 years ago. Dad taken into hospital Christmas Eve and I had to stay over with my mum who has dementia . Christmas Day driving back and forth home to open presents , cook the turkey and plate up a dinner to take to FIL and to mum, then up to the hospital to visit my dad . Back home to eat Christmas dinner with DH and DS in the evening .
I then had to go back to spend the night with my mum. DH let 16 yo DS go round to his mates and sleepover .
Phone call Boxing Day morning from his friend's mum complaining DS had drunk all her Baileys and thrown up on her new rug ......

I might be an outlier, but Christmas is to me, a sad time. Too many now gone who were just fabulous fun. Bless them all.

My childhood was a bit of a mess and my family are drama queens - there are a few...

1. The year I was about 14 and my mum's then-husband tapped my 12 year old sister lightly on the head with something and she started screaming at my mum that he had hit her. Despite my 7 year old brother and I telling her that my sister was talking crap, my mother used it as an excuse to create some drama and went mental. She and then-husband had a massive row upstairs, my sister played a dying martyr act in her room saying she was in pain from the "Hit" and my brother and I ate Christmas dinner alone.

1. The year that my mother decided that my uncle "was jealous of her" and that she was going to tell him this whilst everyone was opening their presents. Cue massive row. They haven't spoken since.

1. The year my sister (then 20) and her fiance had my mum, her (new) husband and my then-15 year old brother over for xmas at the pub her fiance worked in. They also invited the finance's mum. My mother took major offence has how "lazy" she perceived the fiance's mum to be and caused a huge row. My sister kicked her and my brother out. I had to go and collect my brother and bring him to mine for a leftover dinner.

1. The year my mother and sister shouted and screamed at each other throughout dinner because they didn't agree with each others' parenting styles.

1. All the years that my mother has played the martyr act for whatever reason. Her favourite phrase is "im such a bad mother, you all hate me. Nobody loves me". She is a bad mother tbh - totally dramatic and self centered.

I'm sure there are many others.

We always had lovely,noisy, slightly chaotic family Christmas times growing up with lots of cousins,aunts, uncles etc. Once married tried to have in-laws over but they never seemed happy and FIL always drank too much,critical, negative, trying to start arguments etc.They moved to a country about an hours flight away and I foolishly tried to do the right thing,brought the children to stay, tried to grin and bear it for DH. Really they just wanted DH to go to the pub with them and pay for nice meals out. On the last occasion they were hungover so didn't get up to see the magic and excitement of the children opening presents,it really saddened me that they didn't seem bothered about anything or anyone. No one visited (aunts, cousins etc) it was such a miserable stay I vowed I could never go back again. DH visits on his own now, it's just easier. It's so sad but they are just such cold, closed people compared to my family and I couldn't waste any more special Christmas times on them! Nothing compared to some on here though, 💐 for you all.

Our worst one was when we were invited to my SILs for the day. DH got pissed and argumentative and ended up in a heated political "debate" with his (grown up) niece, they are at totally opposite ends of the political spectrum. DBIL who was also a little worse for wear stepped in to defend her, and it all got rather heated and nasty. BIL then ended up basically saying asking we all had to leave - but it was late in the day and I had drunk too much to drive safely (we were meant to be staying over). SIL was in tears, my PILs were hideously embarrassed and all the younger kids were upset. It ended up with drunk DH and BIL going to bed to sleep it off and the rest of us quietly drinking tea and playing some card games with the kids to try and recover a bit of the day. We haven't had a Christmas with them since, family relations were v strained for a while and have never 100% recovered tbh.

My sons first Christmas! I am a real Christmas freak, think 11 trees, 2000 lights and a locally semi famous (so I like to think) count down from 40 sleeps to go across a huge bay window!
I woke up with my first what I now know is a migraine with aura, felt awful, couldn't get out of bed. My husband looked after our 4 month old in the nursery quietly so I could sleep and eat painkillers.
I surfaced about 10am just about able to move! We all head downstairs where trees, gifts, gingerbread and wonder was all laid out the night before... to find the cat who was used to being let out at 6am had peed over half the gifts under the big tree :(
Trying to clean it up and rescue gifts the smell made me vomit, so suddenly I barely made it out from under the tree!
At his point I tried to cancel Christmas but DH reminded me of our guests who would already be en route.
We finally had a cup of tea and quietly opened gifts about 12 and our guests arrived at 12.30 to pajamas and half opened packages everywhere! DH and I cooked between us very slowly as moving fast hurt my head, dinner was at 5 rather than the planned 2pm!
Thankfully by 5 my head cleared, I managed to eat some diner and a pleasant evening was had, but for all my love of Christmas that one almost broke me!

We were living in France where it is impossible to buy a large turkey as a whole bird. Lots of legs and chopped meat, but no actual turkey shaped bird. So we asked our sons to bring us one from the UK. He packed a frozen one in his car. It was the year there was lots of snow. He came via Calais and the mayor held them up on the ferry for about an extra 8 hours. He then drove 400 miles. The turkey looked okay and seemed (miraculously, or not as it turned out) to still be frozen, so we defrosted and ate it. I think we were all sick, some of us with projectile vomiting, at some point after that meal.
Another year my youngest son's chicken had hatched chicks but a dog killed the mother, so he insisted on bringing them into the kitchen. In a black plastic dustbin. That wasn't too bad, but we had friends coming for Christmas dinner. It was a bit interesting with all the cheeping going on.

I'd love to have chicks in the house! Lovely sound and cute cuddles.

Sil sitting on toilet my mother trying to get in to get stuff from loft which was a low down hatch, sil understandably said no mother went in anyway,
Huge arguments
I named that year "toiletgate!" Gave me a lot of entertainment hahaha

When I was 2 I was diagnosed with dislocated hips and put into plaster casts for a long while. On Christmas Day I was winging and thoroughly miserable. DM was in bed with flu and there were my 2 DBs both also under 5.

Dad took me to the hospital in despair and the A&E dr sawed off the plaster to find I had three Lego blocks festering in my thigh. I still have the Lego shaped scars more than 50 years later.

Fortunately I can’t actually remember it but it must have been bloody agonising.

Chicks in the house sounds great in theory but they can be quite smelly and they NEVER SHUT UP.

@houseinthesnow

My first christmas with my dp, and we wanted to impress!

We had my new MIL and FIL there (he had dementia) and my granny and parents. All started beautifully, until the oven fan broke down and the turkey was still raw after seven hours! It was my first ever year making christmas dinner, in my efforts to keep the party spirit going we decided to keep the drinks flowing! So after a few hours, the food was still uncooked and I noticed my granny swaying she was 96, I walked in the dining room to my pet rabbit running up and down the christmas table (My FIL had got him out of his hutch) my granny had passed out in the chair, my mother in law had 'lost' my FIL and was out in the road looking for him, my mother was laughing rather hysterically about this being a christmas she will never forget, and my father complained endlessly that his legs were giving way from starvation!

So we served half cooked potatoes, and mircowaved turkey, everyone was too drunk to notice, meanwhile my MIL was LAYING on the kitchen floor wailing that she could no longer cope with FIL and we had to step over her in order to serve the dinner - by this point it was dark and a good time to distract everyone with fireworks!

BIG MISTAKE

So we lit the fireworks, and one went into the bin section of the hotel next door, and promptly set fire due to the boxes and packaging. We then had to call out the fire service, and the hotel manager and explain that the hotel was on fire at the back.
At this point I really WAS having a breakdown, FIL was dancing on the table, I had lost my rabbit, my granny thought she was in the war again due to the fireworks - Dad was eating crisps for christmas lunch, and I was very stressed and very drunk. Dad said he was going to stop at the chinese on the way home on his way out as a thank for my efforts, and honestly i vowed I would never ever host christmas ever again!

It just happened to be my granny and FIL last christmas, I hope they will forgive me

I laughed hard picturing all this, like a great movie!!🥴

My now ex husband battering and throttling me in the night of Xmas eve and my son (then 5 )looking horrified when he saw my face the next morning.
My now deceased narc mother upon seeing me,showing him sympathy by saying "he's broken 😕" and totally ignoring my facial injuries.
My father refused to let me stay at their 5 bed house as I obviously feared my now ex said sorry we can't accommodate and my brother when I told him I had ended my marriage, that I needed to "fuck off ,as you're ruining my Xmas"
Every Xmas has been so much better since then 🙂

There's been a few.
One year I was back from university and me and my little brother went to Oxford St as my mum gave him some money to spend. He used it to buy presents for the family. On Christmas Day my mum asked him what he bought and went mad because he'd spent the money on all of us and not himself

Another year, we had a dodgy cooker that needed to be lit with matches. Christmas morning I woke to hear my mum screaming at my sobbing sister that she had ruined Christmas because she couldn't find the matches. I immediately went downstairs to intervene and promptly found the matches. No apology from my mum either.
My mum is still a narcissist so I no longer spend Christmas with her.

@Nottherealslimshady

My parents were split up. And both my mums parents had died. Our aunties and uncles were alot older than mum and busy with their kids and grandkids. So my mum rarely got any presents. She'd get one from one of our aunties and one from us if one of our aunties took us. I always felt so bad and used to open Christmas cards early to take the money to buy presents with.

But this one Christmas my dad had bought her a present. He was usually horrible to her. She was so thrilled, really touched, really thought he'd actually shown her some appreciation for everything she does for his daughter with no help from him. It was a lump of coal. He'd gone to the effort of buying and wrapping a lump of coal (one of those boxed, you're on the naughty list things). It was horrible, she was heartbroken. I felt sick with guilt, like I was responsible for him.

I'll never forgive him for that. And now we can afford it, I always spend alot on her and make sure she has a lot to open.

What a nasty, unnecessary, spiteful thing to do!

Your poor mum!

I could never forgive someone who was as cruel as that.

Two bad ones...the first when I was a teenager, and Dads OW had followed him back from abroad (he'd met her whilst on deployment) and she phoned our house. Mum had wondered whilst he was away from the tone of his letters, but then it was confirmed. Cue a year of him shacking up with her in one port during the week, and coming back to us near another at weekends. This continued til the next Christmas and NYE, when he said he would leave Mum and we kids, (db didn't know about any of this as he was 11, didn't find out til he was 21), but then decided to stay.

Second bad one, dh got sent to sea Christmas Eve unexpectedly, and I had to host his parents and Granny all Christmas.

Is it too late to join in? A few years ago, Boxing day at a big extended family party. My (now Ex) Husband cracked well into the red wine at a speed far exceeding everyone else. All my attempts to gently rein him in did was spur the [nasty, narcissistic, abusive] prick on. Come some time mid-evening once he'd already thoroughly offended everybody there, he violently threw up red wine all over the cream walls and flooring of the hallway, stairs and bathroom. He spent the night on the conservatory floor and it was the last Christmas we spent together.

Another year, Christmas Day evening in the local with my DParents. All had a few to drink, first Christmas since my maternal GM had passed away. My DPs chose this moment to drop a bombshell family secret about her that explained a long-standing family rift which had a big effect on all of us. I didn't take it particularly well, declared the recently deceased GM an evil old bitch (I stand by this), took umbrage with my DPs for keeping this all from me, and stormed out of the pub, summoning an uber home. Sadly I then realised I'd left my handbag inside the pub, so had to storm back in, snatch it up and storm out again.....

Fa la la la la laaaaaaa

My husband died a few days before Christmas.

That's truly terrible. So sorry for your loss

So be assured, however crap your Christmas may turn out to be, if you have CHRISTMAS TOMATOES in your fridge then you are totally winning at life. Have a good one!

I have!

I have Christmas Tomatoes in my fridge.

Nobody ate even ONE!

They are now to old to eat, but not old enough to throw away. Another two days, I think, and then it's the compost for them!

You'll probably find tomato plants growing in it next year.