To ask the worst behaviour at Christmas you’ve witnessed by an adult?

[SoniaFouler]

Mine is:

Drunk cousin (24 at the time) shouting and arguing with everyone for most of Boxing Day three years ago, then topped it off when someone told her to stop being stupid by standing up and scraping the entire contents of her dinner plate all over the table and made my aunt cry.

Re: 'valid' reasons for relatives kicking off, it's largely the volume of booze isn't it? That and festering resentments, petty scores to settle etc.

I do feel sorry for the emergency services. Reading through this thread, they must have to put up with so much alcohol-induced nonsense on the big day.

Thought of another.

Last Christmas I spent at home.

My brother and I decided to pay for everything to treat my mother and take the pressure off as she’d been working all year in a physically demanding care job. Anyway we decorated the whole house and made it look super nice. It lasted 2 days before my mother decided to pull the tree over and throw books at the ceiling decorations.

When we were out the following day redid the decorations with her own, replaced all the food we’d bought (like she emptied the contents of the fridge that my brother and I had bought and paid for) into a black bin bag and told us Christmas was ‘hers’.

We think it was a power trip. She does stuff like that a lot.

I refuse to go there now.

@DimplesToadfoot

I was a single parent, on my knees financially, with no family of my own I had no help from anyone, the only presents my DS 9yo got were what I bought and it was never much. I scrimped and scraped to buy a remote control car, DS was playing with it on the driveway, the car was on the cusp of the driveway and pavement and had stopped moving, before either I or my son could get to it a man crossed the road and stomped on it, obviously shattering it into pieces. I shouted after the man but I'm disabled I couldn't give chase :-( my son was heartbroken and there was absolutely nothing I could do :-( eventually months later I had the money for another car, he didnt want one :-( Christmas never was the same for my DS after

Your post has actually made me cry, I'm so upset and angry for your son and yourself! I'm so sorry that foul man did that to ye! I was a single mum on SW for years and also could not afford expensive presents. We were rarely invited anywhere for Christmas and spent most of them just the two of us but never was anyone as cruel as this to either of us!. My heart goes out to ye both! I am also bewildered and disgusted at the sheer spite and malevolence of that man! It just goes to show, evil DOES exist and it's often not dramatic, just petty, contemptable spite, committed by small people who seem to have nothing of merit in their characters. If it's any comfort, your son and you have each other- that excuse for a man probably wasn't and isn't loved by nor loves anyone! I doubt if he even knows what love is! I hope you and your son have the best possible Christmas this year and send you both my best wishes!

I think a lot of arguments stem from resentments, jealousy and previous disagreements that are then fueled by alcohol and Christmas stress and it causes absolute chaos. Not saying its right, but I can see how it becomes a tipping point.

@junglejane66
You’re my new best friend

@Steelesauce

I think a lot of arguments stem from resentments, jealousy and previous disagreements that are then fueled by alcohol and Christmas stress and it causes absolute chaos. Not saying its right, but I can see how it becomes a tipping point.

Yes, and also the expectation - 'it's the most wonderful time of the year' and all that. But for lots of people it's not. In fact it's anything but.

@SamhainToImbolc

*Reading through this thread, it's obvious that alcohol causes so many problems.

If anybody is reading this and planning on getting absolutely wasted this Christmas, do have a serious think first about whether you can handle it.

Don't ruin everybody else' Christmas just because you can hit the bottle from 8am.

Sorry, realise I sound very teacher-ish here but I think it's a serious thing for each of us to consider ahead of the festivities.*

Completely agree with this. Having grown up with an alcoholic father who often ruined family gatherings and could make Christmas an unhappy time for the rest of us, I would also urge anyone who drinks to get drunk and then can't handle it, and gets into arguments, to think seriously about the fall-out from this and how much hurt it causes.

As if! Anyone who drinks to get drunk does not give a shiny shit about anyone else. Ever.

@Mudflaps

I'm lucky to have had wonderful parents who ensured we had great Christmas's but my dm's sister and her husband were both alcoholics, every single Christmas I remember from early childhood to when my uncle died had my mother rescuing my cousins from some fight, these fights between my aunt and her husband were violent affairs involving broken windows, police, ambulances etc, I didn't realise until my teens that my parents always budgeted to include providing Christmas Dinner, Santa gifts and clothes for my cousins as well as our family. Most Christmas I'd end up sharing my bed with a couple of cousins. I hate that alcohol ruins so much for so many.

But your cousins had your mum and you, that counts for a lot.

@Justilou1
There is! Funko make them

Not so much a Christmas day dust up but extreme CF behaviour in the supermarket. I saw a women start taking packs of sausage meat out of an unattended trolley and place it in her own before quietly moving on. It was a few days before Christmas so lots of basic staples were missing and folk were getting desperate but witnessing the trolley theft really annoyed me. The trolley owners were a couple of pensioners and I just thought of my folks being ripped off. Completely childish behaviour on my part but I followed the CF women around the aisles and sure enough at one point she left her trolley unattended in the 'world foods' aisle and I swapped the sausage meat with a few bags of bombay mix and returned the sausage meat to the original owners.

My birth dad used to hit my mum. One of my earliest memories is of him throwing the Christmas dinner in the bin and breaking her nose because it didn't taste like his mum's. Luckily she left soon after.

Fast forward to teen years- my stepdad was diagnosed as terminally ill on 23/12. Massive shock as he was young and we all thought he just had a terrible flu. Was lung cancer. Anyway, given a week to live max as was a particularly aggressive type. He hated where we lived and didn't want to die in hospital so his absolutely batshit crazy sis offered to "host" him at her house so he could die at home over Christmas. She "allowed" my mum to stay with him... Didn't want us kids there ruining her hand wringing and fake Catholic martyrdom though. We were permitted a 30 minute visit by her. By boxing day evening when it was very apparent that my stubborn dad was going to last far longer than a week she turfed them out- didn't want her house full of all of the drugs, oxygen tanks and syringe drivers necessary to keep her brother pain free. My mum had to rent and move us all to a new house in the space of 15 hours. She was and still is a truly spiteful bitch.

Since his death 20 odd years ago my mum has become an alcoholic. Every single Christmas has ended in her stropping off to bed hammered after picking a fight with me for some perceived or real comment (i.e. it's 9am- do you think you could wait until midday before downing the whole bottle of Bailey's.... ).

I bloody loathe Christmas. It's so much better now that I have my own kids and can stay the hell away from everyone else.

@DillonPanthersTexas

Not so much a Christmas day dust up but extreme CF behaviour in the supermarket. I saw a women start taking packs of sausage meat out of an unattended trolley and place it in her own before quietly moving on. It was a few days before Christmas so lots of basic staples were missing and folk were getting desperate but witnessing the trolley theft really annoyed me. The trolley owners were a couple of pensioners and I just thought of my folks being ripped off. Completely childish behaviour on my part but I followed the CF women around the aisles and sure enough at one point she left her trolley unattended in the 'world foods' aisle and I swapped the sausage meat with a few bags of bombay mix and returned the sausage meat to the original owners.

👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻 🎄

@Justilou1
Ignore that! I just got to the whole turbo man/thermoman saga 😅

We now have to run a 'Dad Free' christmas, between my sister and I.

Our dad - some how decided that Christmas day, lunch cooked by my sister and I at her house - is an excuse to be as badly behaved as he possibly can, which involves trying to wind us both up, being rude, demanding and stroppy.

He'll normally agree to stay at hers so he can drink and no one has to drive him home and then change his mind once utterly wankered, attempt to drive home (fail as we will have stolen and hidden his keys long before this point), call us cunts, attempt to WALK home threatening us that he will fall in a ditch or get run over and die (its 12 miles and he's now 80...so he probably isn't wrong there!)...

Then MY OH will patiently drive him home whilst he alternately bitches about sister and I and tells OH how wonderful he is.

The last year however, he truly excelled himself - faced with a table of cold meats, pates and tiny toastie things as a starter, he was determined to eat the lot and refused to stop so that the main meal could be served. My sister refused to budge, whereas I said if he wants to keep eating starters let him... so they had a big row, which culminated in him throwing a side plate at her head (though 4 G n T's in, he had no chance of hitting her)...

He carried on being vile and was taken home early...

Miraculously however.. he has since agreed that he will NOT attend christmas dinner - instead he is taken to the pub for 2 hours, brought home, given a plate of food and left to grump to himself with the TV for company, as he agrees he can't behave and so shouldn't go! A level of self-awareness i didnt think he could achieve!

OH's dad came two christmases in a row and was rude to host, rude to OH but worst of all..

Having been told we were working really hard to ensure small child (sisters god daughter) had a VERY happy christmas, and WHY we were doing this - she was at the time JUST at the age where they start forming early memories, she'd also been present when her father killed himself only a few weeks earlier and we really really wanted to do as much as possible to ensure she remembers NOTHING of that!

He moaned CONSTANTLY that 'she always comes first'. Well yes, because shes 2 fgs. Also she was not actually the centre of attention for an unreasonable amount of time at all and as toddlers go was really very tolerable indeed (and im not remotely kid friendly or particularly entertained by small children!).

He also kept teasing her, changing the tv channel after we'd got her settled in front of something, shunning her when she offered toys or tried to talk to him. At one point I had to shout at him because he was taunting her with a chocolate bar, and I did shout at him, telling him if he was going to taunt, he had to share, or he could go and eat outside by himself!

So he is no longer invited and we have a Dad free Christmas and it is bloody lovely! :D

@DillonPanthersTexas

Not so much a Christmas day dust up but extreme CF behaviour in the supermarket. I saw a women start taking packs of sausage meat out of an unattended trolley and place it in her own before quietly moving on. It was a few days before Christmas so lots of basic staples were missing and folk were getting desperate but witnessing the trolley theft really annoyed me. The trolley owners were a couple of pensioners and I just thought of my folks being ripped off. Completely childish behaviour on my part but I followed the CF women around the aisles and sure enough at one point she left her trolley unattended in the 'world foods' aisle and I swapped the sausage meat with a few bags of bombay mix and returned the sausage meat to the original owners.

Well Done!! 💪

This thread is just shocking. I can’t believe how utterly horrible so many peoples parents are. I hope you all have the Christmas you deserve this year away from all those horrible people. It is really not normal to act like that so don’t even try do the normal family Christmas thing.

The child abuse too is just awful to read when you think of so many wonderful couples who would love children and can’t have them and then see parents treating their young and adult children so badly. It’s dreadful.

@RaPumPumPumPum

I’d quite like to hear the other people’s side of some of these stories as I just don’t believe people physically attack their family members on Christmas Day ‘for no reason whatsoever’

You are really naive.

There are some nasty people in this world who will do exactly that.

Including my dad's sperms donor, a vicious nasty man who beat my dad up as a child for the crime of being selected for his grammar school football team. Like other people mentioned here, he was an alcoholic narc. He's dead, thank goodness.

Not openly horrible but my childhood was really tainted by the tension in my family.
My not so DF and his family were a bunch of narcs. DGM who never grew up and was a horrible, stupid, spiteful woman with a tongue venomous like a black mamba, my aunts, two spinsters who spent their lives waiting for their dream men (they had them down to the colour of their eyes and names, sadly, just in their heads) would always insist we spent the Christmas over at their house "as a family". They would fawn over me as the favourite first GC and my brother and my sister were just secondary in their attentions. I never enjoyed that special attention and remember feeling like a bone thrown in the middle of a hungry dog pack throughout my childhood.
I still remember feeling the undercurrents, the tension between my parents who divorced way too late because my DM considered it a failure to leave her good for nothing husband and "fail" her children. She should have done it if anyone asks me or my siblings.
I made sure to move hundreds of miles away from my family and we only spend our Christmas together as our small nuclear family, plus the DCat and the DDog.

i am kinda glad the worst thing i had to deal with was, mother in law to be complaining that we had no beer .I served lamb for christmas dinner and served it with wine but they made it very clear they wanted beer.So after doing all the christmas dinner myself that was the response i got hhhhmmmmm.

@RaPumPumPumPum - so you're one of those who believe that people who got beaten deserved that?

@DillonPanthersTexas

My hyper competitive sister in law decided to play trivial pursuit and made a big deal of policing the answers to the point that they had to be exactly what was written on the card. She was just painfully obnoxious throughout the game, mocking people for getting questions wrong, or answering questions that were not hers to answer. She refused to hand over a 'cheese' to me because I missed out an 'R' on the who wrote Lord of the Rings question, I had answered J R Tolkien, and not J R R Tolkien, I just rolled my eyes. Got my own back later when she had the final question to win the game which was 'In biblical times what measured 120 X 40 X 40 cubits? She triumphantly screams ' I know this one ...Noah's Ark' before acting the complete arse celebrating. I said no, you got it wrong it was 'The Ark.....not Noah's Ark'. That's what it says on the card, see? She flips the board over and storms out the room. Fucking idiot.

Thought of this straight away! 😉

I was 23, single and living by myself. My Mum's cancer was terminal but I couldn't afford the flight home to go and spend Christmas with her and I couldn't get the time off work anyway. I casually mentioned to a very close old boarding school friend (then 19 and at university - we're both male) about the situation; he shrugged and muttered some platitude along the lines of "that's tough".

Fast forward to Boxing Day. Friend's mother called me at 9am absolutely mortified that I had spent Christmas by myself. Friend had only mentioned it late on Christmas Day when she'd asked "What's Otherpeoplesteens doing for Christmas?". She was genuinely horrified and apologetic, and asked if I'd like to come and spend New Years Eve with them and stay over instead. I accepted.

I drove up after work on NYE. My hosts had invited a number of friends and neighbours, and I'd offered to bring some canapés as well. Friend's parents were running around like blue-arsed flies, I got stuck in helping with stuff. My friend was nowhere to be seen - he had fucked off with one of his local friends without telling anyone where he'd actually gone, and this was pre mobile days so I couldn't go and join him. He got back in time for midnight perfectly sober as he'd been driving, had a glass of bubbly then went straight to bed.

Party wound down about 1am and friend's 12 year old brother had been at the buck's fizz, so I spent much of the night holding him over the toilet bowl. I got up at 9am and cleared up from the night before, friend's parents and the 12 year old joined me about an hour later. No sign of my friend himself.

Friend finally emerged at noon, and went straight out to his car to go to the cinema - to see a movie he knew I wanted to watch - with another local friend. Didn't invite me to join him.

I felt so sorry for his parents, and his brother. I had made a 180 mile round trip in filthy weather to spend less than ten minutes in total with him. They looked so ashamed of my friend. I didn't hang around for an explanation.

It's hard-hearted people like that old woman who give us Catholics a bad name. I too was a single mother for 9 years, then returned to practising the Faith and got married. Not only would I never judge a single mother, I admire them because they are the parent that love their children , born and unborn, enough to love them and rear them, no matter the odds stacked against them. Christ is a God of LOVE. I think the old woman must not have understood the Gospels very well! She certainly seemed to have missed the bit where Jesus said "Let he ( or SHE!) who is without sin amongst you, cast the first stone!"

You have shown love to your friend by continuing to be there for her and I can tell you, the support and love of friends meant more to me than I could ever put into words or repay when I was a single mother! It meant loads to my son too! Happy Christmas to ye both and to your families!

@YourVagesty

Reading through this thread, it's obvious that alcohol causes so many problems.

If anybody is reading this and planning on getting absolutely wasted this Christmas, do have a serious think first about whether you can handle it.

Don't ruin everybody else' Christmas just because you can hit the bottle from 8am.

Sorry, realise I sound very teacher-ish here but I think it's a serious thing for each of us to consider ahead of the festivities.

I make you absolutely right.

Wow, this thread is an eye opener. It's just awful to imagine some of the behaviour that has been detailed here, and I feel truly sorry for those of you who have suffered with such vile people.

My worst one is not a patch on these. It was years ago when I went to PILs for Christmas lunch. My FIL was a bit of a glutton who would freely help himself to food whenever he was at ours. When we sat down for lunch, FIL took charge of placing food on people's plates while we were all sat at the table. He served himself and MIL first, then my DH and his sister, then - as 'outsiders' me and BIL got served. BIL first and me last. He put a tiny portion on my plate. Worst still my 'D'H saw what was happening and said nothing. PILs have since passed, and I separated from H earlier this year, so I'm actually looking forward to a stress free Christmas for the first time.