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.

@OssieShowman - I think you have led a sheltered life. I’m in Aus too…. Stoned usually refers to someone who has been enjoying marijuana, cannabis, etc…
The Urban Dictionary definition I think you will relate to most is below.
Stoned:
A state of mind which occurs after smoking enough marijuana to the point where the user stares blankly into whatever catches his/her attention
"I'm was so stoned I didn't notice the movie was in French."
by j-dog April 21, 2003

@IntermittentParps - the simmering tension and undercurrents can mess up with your perception of Christmas and spoil the day, even though you're a child and not fully aware of the "behind the scenes" stuff. I already described mine and they were exactly like this. No obvious scenes, shouting or bad behaviour, all smiles (at least 50% fake) and the tension that was there. And me, desperately trying to be a part of my own, smaller family and my Mum's daughter instead of the "Grandma's and Aunties' favourite child" - and they were very obvious about it.

@HangingDitch

A complete stranger, pissed, got on the roof, climbed down the chimney, left a pile of boxes in the living room, helped himself to a mince pie and a glass of sherry, and then fucked off. I was disgusted.

While mild in comparison to some of the terrible Christmases mentioned in this thread....
My mother had a terrible upbringing so wants Christmas to be perfect. However, she is manifestly unable grasp the fact that she is the one ruins Christmas for everyone every single year. The cycle starts mid-November, planning and obsessing over every single detail. So, by the time Christmas week arrives, she is at fever pitch and wound herself so tight. One thing that doesn't go right and BOOM she explodes into temper, gets drunk, screams, has tantrums and makes the day hell for everyone. It doesn’t matter if its Christmas at hers or staying elsewhere being waited on hand and foot - we have tried every variation over the years to try to break this cycle.
Only a few of her gems:
She was so rude and drunk at the In Laws Christmas dinner that she has never been invited back and can’t understand why as she was ‘just a bit tipsy’. (Please note: We warned them but the In-laws insisted she come) The MILDEST thing she did that night was called my Fil the ‘N’ word conversationally because she thought he ‘would be down with that’ and asked about how big he was as she heard that ‘his kind’ were all huge. Asked newlywed guests when they were going to be having babies then scoffed and called them selfish when they said they were remaining child free – stood up and toasted the whole table at them as ‘the smug married selfish couple who were abject a failure in the eyes of every ancestor that ever came before them’ then assaulted the men that evicted her from the In Laws house to a taxi.
She turned up late Christmas Eve at a family members house. While lulled into a false sense of security having very civilised tea and cake the family member excitedly mentioned the kids presents. She advised they were one of a kind super special with treasure hunt all planned as it was a lead in to a big ‘Christmas reveal’ where they were announcing to the kids they were moving abroad. My mother took this announcement personally and it ‘just ruined Christmas’ for her. While saying she was going to the loo decided to show the kids where the presents were hidden. The family member was inconsolable and my mother was smugly unrepentant exclaiming that she was a victim of a terrible misunderstanding and she thought the family member was ‘so worried’ about telling the kids – and she had been ‘trying to help’ by doing it for her.
Turned up hammered and uninvited at a different family members Christmas works party (she thought it would be funny) and caused such a terrible scene the family member was formally disciplined because she was so shocking it just couldn’t go unmarked. My mother felt they were all just being fuddy-duddy’s and they all over reacted plus how they treated her ‘ruined her Christmas’.
Drunk driven several times from friends or relatives’ houses, where she is staying over, after some imagined upset or slight that ‘ruins her Christmas’. She has got such a reputation for doing this no one will invite her anymore and have her be a risk to herself and others (they are not aware she has left to stop her - as she just takes affront and leaves without a word)
Staying in a hotel for Christmas, so didn’t have her car. In fit of temper, after she felt another guest insulted her and ‘ruined her Christmas’, stole a friend of the family’s hire car who was visiting from abroad. Crashed it while drunk - ran away from the scene and denied everything. Lied through her teeth she was elsewhere and caused an administrative nightmare that lasted well over a year for the friend.
She tried to start a physical fight with a neighbour over their decorations (she felt they were trying to show her up and ‘ruined her Christmas’)
Got black out drunk to 'spite us' because we had all requested an alcohol-free Christmas and everyone (including her!) fully agreed. She lost her temper over nothing and drove to get wine then screamed at us that we were trying to control what she could and couldn’t do in her own home and ruined Christmas for her.
Had a pudding not turn out the way she wanted on Christmas Eve, so started early with the temper tantrum and threw it at a wall. Started drinking much earlier than she normally would so had such a severe hangover she slept through Christmas day. We had a wonderful time that year and it was such an eye opener it was the last year she ever had a family Christmas because we realised what we were missing.
Now she is so unhappy and so very lonely - so will tell anyone and everyone how shameful we all are because no one will spend Christmas with her, a poor old lady in her later years shunned by her uncaring unfeeling family.
Her social worker called me once with a medical update (with my mother’s permission) and tried to hint that she's lonely round Christmas time and not going to family / family not coming to her was really getting her down. I had to explain quite firmly that most of the family refuse to speak to her because of past poor behaviour and now we refuse to be guilt tripped into playing happy families at the expense of having a peaceful/ calm Christmas. So, she can stay home on her own thank you very much.

Sorry it came out as one long block - it didn't look like that before posting it !

just Pinteresque Christmases at my parents' before they finally saw sense and divorced. It was simmering tension and the occasional blow-up.

Well I’d claim you must be my sister except my parents never divorced and the whole shit show when on until my father died (we never did collect his ashes, I wonder what happened to them)

Everyday was this sense of tension as if something was going to explode, sometimes it did which was almost a relief

As soon as I got my first car I spent Christmas with relations, only returning home for lunch and then left

@MyComputerGetsSadWithoutMe

My sister coming out as gay- NOT because she was gay but because she then had a massive strop and sulk because all everyone said was that it's okay and we love her. She was drunk and wanted drama and for everyone to be shocked 😅

I read somewhere that Matt Lucas's "Dafydd - the only gay in the village" character was based on his mum's reaction to him coming out to her. He wanted drama and she was "whatever"

Not Xmas day per se, but a friend's husband would go shopping in Manchester on Xmas Eve - well, when I say shopping, he would go to the pub, and then stagger out at 4.30pm and hoover up what remained at Boots and WHSmith (not a lot) as presents for his wife and the kids before catching the 5pm train home and drunkenly fall asleep in front of the telly, leaving her to wrap her own present and the kids'.

One year, she didn't hear from him at 5pm, nor 6pm, or 7. Eventually, around 8pm, he calls here from a phone box (reverse charged) to say that he was in Widnes, he'd fallen asleep on the train, and there were no trains back to Manchester until the 27th December, and "could she come and pick him up?". She'd half a mind to tell him to sling it, but he'd tried and failed to get a taxi, and she would have had a very unhappy 5 and 3 year olds on Xmas day if she didn't. And so it was that at 8.30pm she had to load 2 very tired kids into the car and drive for 90 minutes searching for the train station and another 60 minutes bring him back.

And to cap it all, he left all the presents on the train.

I turned up on Boxing Day and she still wasn't talking to him.

Another one with an unpredictable alcoholic mother, her "best" tactics was to just go AWOL a day or so before Christmas to leave us with my dad and then having to explain to grandparents, extended family why my mother wasn't there. Very much remember going out with my dad getting some Xmas presents for us on Christmas eve as they would never be very organised. She usually came back a few days later and it was never talked about with us kids

Another one was a poor non blood auntie who had dementia and it was always drama as she couldn't find her hand bag or would crazily dance around the tree and try and get us kids involved.

another miserable alcoholic father buggering everything up here too!

one of my earliest memories is a policeman standing in our hall after my DM had called them on DF because he'd got drunk and smashed everything up (again). I remember laughing because the policeman was very tall and he had one of the old style police hats on, the kind like a pointy helmet (early 80's). This meant that our shiny Christmas decorations that were hanging from the ceiling were resting on top of his helmet and it looked (to me) like they were growing out of the top of his head.

Without fail, DF would get drunk and cause all sorts of chaos every year. He got kicked out when I was 8 or 9 and things were much better. The worst we had to worry about was the year all the fuses blew and we had to take our entire Christmas dinner, still in pans and in varying states of cooked-ness, round to our lovely neighbours who just shoved it in with theirs and we all ate together.

Or the year next door's terror-cat climbed up the Christmas tree, refused to be dragged out and chewed its way through half the decorations and the lights.

The bad Christmas behaviour story in our family is about me. I am usually the person who does the majority of the work in the run up to Christmas and on the day, and I do find this stressful. In order to minimise the stress as much as I can, I plan things carefully, and have lots of lists, including a menu for the week (I menu plan anyway, so this is not unusual for me).

For several years I've had the same menu for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the 27th - easily cooked party food for the 24th, roast goose and all the trimmings for Christmas dinner, cold gammon, coleslaw and baked potatoes for Boxing Day, and then the left over goose, in a sticky asian marinade, on the 27th.

This particular year, all had gone swimmingly, up to the point where I went to shred the left over goose and put it in the marinade - only to find that ds2 had decided to make himself a delicious cold roast goose sandwich for his lunch, and had eaten half the left overs!!

I burst into tears, told ds2 off, because there was now nothing for dinner. Dh took me off to the front room, plied me with sherry, and then made dinner - of course there was plenty of food in the house - cold gammon, salad stuff, some cold goose - and he made a lovely meal.

It was stupid of me to get into such a state, over such a small thing - I can only assume that it was the cumulation of stress in the weeks leading up to Christmas that made me act so out of character - I was sober as a judge - and I am relieved to say that I didn't spoil Christmas - I did apologise to all concerned.

It comes up every Christmas now - one or other of the dses will always ask if they can make a cold roast goose sandwich. I guess I deserve the teasing!

" think a lot of Christmas blow-ups are the consequence of everything coming to a boil (pressure cooker environment) with everyone trapped together, too much alcohol and so on and then arguments ensue"

This.

When I worked in Housing Advice, we were always massively overworked straight after Xmas, as simmering tensions from the year would boil over when people spent a week in close proximity.

Many of these Xmasses are truly truly awful

I have a grown adult BIL who behaves like a toddler and always pulled a "face" upon opening his present, never said thank you for any present we bought him from his expensive gift list he circulated each year! If his own DW didnt get him exactly what he wanted he'd sulk and stop talking to her for a week apparently.
When he ditched exSIL for a younger model we just stopped buying birthday/Xmas cards for him (or the OW) as he never wrote a card or selected a present for either of us in the 30 years he was with ex SIL - she did all the wife work.
Christmas is so much calmer nowadays!

@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.

That made me lol, you're fkg brilliant.

@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

This is terrible, I’m so sorry. I think I remember a thread about it?

It must have been really upsetting but it’s clear your ds is well loved and that’s the main thing 💐

@DevonSunsets wow. That is a LOT. You poor thing. I hope you are doing ok now?

@DevonSunsets that is truly shocking behaviour. She must be in total denial not to see that she is the one ruining Christmas not you.

@MyComputerGetsSadWithoutMe

My sister coming out as gay- NOT because she was gay but because she then had a massive strop and sulk because all everyone said was that it's okay and we love her. She was drunk and wanted drama and for everyone to be shocked 😅

We had exactLy the same, with everyone present over Christmas Dinner including very elderly, very devoutly religious great granny. Everyone was watching her carefully to see her reaction

“ what’s that’s you’re saying dear ?”
“ I’ve got a girlfriend granny”
“ that’s nice dear “
“ No you don’t understand granny, she’s my partner , we’re a couple, we’re lesbians we’re going to get married because we can now it’s called equal marriage but it won’t be in church because the Pope’s a bigot “

etc etc

< everyone holds breath waiting to see if she’s actually going to explain the details of lesbian sex to granny over the dinner table >

“ Thats nice dear , you mean like Betty and Jean who lived next door to us, they were lovely girls “

Cue surprise and a long discussion with all the aunts and uncles in their 50s debating whether or not these neighbours we lived next door to for all of our childhood were indeed a couple.

“ I always though they were sisters “
“ but they had different surnames “
“ I think one was widowed and came to live with her sister “
“ surely they were just old school friends ? “
“ No someone definitely told me Betty was the lodger “
“ But they were at mass every Sunday, did the priest know ? “
“ They used to give us sweets for brining their bins in “
“ remember how she bought us meals when your grandad was ill”
“ what was the names of that little white dog they had? “

Meanwhile the niece who has just “ come out “ sat sulking in the Corner, disappointed at the long dead Betty and jean stealing her thunder.

We were at at a family members for Christmas. One of my siblings had had an operation a couple of months before and our cousin who was 2 or 3 at the time was running around the table. My sibling who was 17 at the time could see toddler running around the table and stepped in front of him. Cousin ran into surgical scar and landed on the floor and my brother just flipped. Screamed and shouted at him and picked my cousin up by his ankles and threw him onto the sofa.

He was told to leave. He kicked off big time as he was put out the door screaming and shouting at everyone and the "stupid little fucker" that ran into him.

Who speaks to a toddler like that.

My brother is still an arsehole and we don't speak. He hasn't met dd3 and hasn't seen ds10 for 5 years because he's an arsehole. My sister who is just as bad as him was shocked at his behaviour that day.

Ok I think maybe @DevonSunsets has the worst! Your mother even beats the dead pheasant. I'm at that list - surely some kind of personality disorder going on there?

[quote Plopcorn]@DevonSunsets that is truly shocking behaviour. She must be in total denial not to see that she is the one ruining Christmas not you.[/quote]
Ah Plopcorn, you underestimate the ability of people to rewrite the past as they see fit - especially that past that shows them in a very bad light.

I'm sure if you asked every single one of the truly poorly behaved people spoken about on this thread they would happily explain that it not their fault, never their fault.

@DevonSunsets what the hell did your mother do at the party that got your family member a disciplinary???

@dimplestoadfoot
That's is so sad what a horrible man, if only he knew what you had done for your boy.
I hope he gets /had his karma for that there was absolutely no need, what goes through some people's head some times is baffling x

@DevonSunsets I’m sure you’re right. I hope you are doing ok now.

@DevonSunsets that's awful.

I'm glad to read that you no longer have Christmases like that.