What was your worst Xmas ever? (Lighthearted)

[unmemorableusername]

Not a Phoebe Cates bad Christmas but daft bad Christmas's you can look back on & laugh.

My Mum invited me round but when I opened my gift from her it was a cookbook with an inscription saying go to page 125 (?). There was the recipe for roast goose (which I dont even like). She then sat back & expected me to cook the meal!

The time when everyone was ill so most stayed in bed and the food just got gradually eaten over the next week.

I was a big TT fan so I got a E17 CD as a present!

A CD when I didn't have a CD player.

An Amazon voucher when I had no home internet/PC/ pre smartphone days.

Chestnuts no one knew how to cook so they were just these hard rocks on a plate.

Teens refusing to dress properly so wearing shorts under the table.

The cat getting at the turkey carcass before the dregs get put in curry. The curry being made regardless.

Getting the car put in the pound on Christmas week because of an unknown rule.

My Mum died. Don’t think I will ever have a worse Christmas than that.

Sorry totally missed the lighthearted bit!

The time I had pneumonia. I’d been feeling a bit under the weather for a couple of days then it struck just after Xmas lunch. I barely remember anything from about 3pm on Xmas day til new year… I only remember new year because that’s when I ended up in hospital.

So sorry @mrsconradfisher 💔

Not sure how it can be both worst and lighthearted @unmemorableusername 🤣

I've had some SHOCKING Christmasses that I have to laugh about now but at the time they were bloody awful. Fucked up in laws 101

Christmas 2015, 38 weeks pregnant. DH worked (so he could have the next one off). I played taxi to all of my family who promised me the latest I would be home is 7pm. I finally got home just before 11pm. Fat, uncomfortable, tired and feeling like I'd been utterly taken the piss out of. I sat and cried. I really wish I'd stayed at home on my own but DH didn't want me to be on my own.

Great gran choked on a Yorkshire pudding one Xmas. My aunt performed the Heimlich manoeuvre and the Yorkshire pudding came flying out whole! Nobody was harmed so it's a story we love to laugh back on now.

The time dd was so excited she actually vomited when she saw her presents... except it turned out to be norovirus, not excitement. And then we discovered that the builders who had just completed our renovation had accidentally blocked our plumbing so raw effluent was accumulating beneath our house.

Amazingly, the relatives who were visiting that year have actually come back. (When I queried their willingness to return, one of them said "Well, we could see it was tricky for you, but we had a lovely time!" 😳)

2024

DH volunteered to pop the bottle of champagne that his grandmother had been saving all year for Christmas Day, only to lodge the cork into the ceiling. No amount of tugging or coaxing got it unstuck, so there it remained as a shameful reminder for the next four years until his grandmother moved house 🤦🏼‍♀️

@ElsaLion this is brilliant!!!!

Fucking hell @Namechangeobviously2024 😂

Mine was probably the last Christmas I lived at home, I was 17, my older brother was 21 then there was my mum and stepdad and my sister who was 2.
we were all really hungover and other than being delighted to watch my baby sister opening her presents with absolute joy, none of us felt human! Stepdad didn’t cook the Christmas dinner, we ate stuff from the freezer, all got duvets on the sofa and ate lying down. There are some photos somewhere of that day and we still roar with laughter 😂
I promise you we aren’t a family of lushes but we had been to a drinks party the night before and all overdid it, my sister was totally oblivious of our lazy approach to Christmas Day being 2 and the year after we went to the drinks party but we stayed for an hour!

My great grandma died aged 99 on Christmas Day 1999. Good innings but missing out on seeing in the new century and reaching her century seemed such a shame.

Not my worst but since this is lighthearted - one year we decided to treat ourselves to a nice country cottage for Christmas as a family. Managed to scrape the brand new car while parking on the drive. One person cut their finger (badly) prepping the veg. We totally underestimated how long it would take to cook a turkey in an aga and ended up eating Xmas dinner at 9:30pm. First and last year we've ever done that!

I have two!

1984 I had new suede red ankle boots and a dogstooth long check skirt and some gold earrings that my parents had bought for me. Went round to my bfs house. He had given me the new Wham CD and a lovely gold necklace but he told me not to tell his Mum he had bought the necklace as he'd taken money out of his savings to buy it. His Mum admired my earrings and I said 'Oh thanks, I got them from my Mum and Dad they go really well with the necklace that bf got for me ... ooops.

1993 I was giving birth. Pretty horrendous time and an emergency c section but all turned out well in the end!

Thirty years ago my waters broke heralding a back to back labour. Shortly after midnight the idiot midwife realised the heartbeat kept fading not due to a fault belt. She hit the emergency button and the room filled with doctors and others. The baby had the cord wrapped round his neck and was too far out for an emergency c section. The registrar said I could have one final.push while he got the forceps ready. I will never know how I did it but I did, bursting a blood vessel in my eye and ending up with a prolapsed bladder. DS was silent and took a bit of resuscitating. His apparent score was 4 and he was purple. He spent the first seven hours in SCBU.

All was well but with hindsight they were very worried. The director of midwifery and consultant visited me on Christmas morning to confirm I was happy with the care I received. At the time I was but with hindsight it was shocking.

The year DM decided not to do Christmas stockings anymore for myself and DSIS - she never said anything, we woke up all excited on Christmas morning to nothing.

The year DF spent the Christmas fund and left DM with no money for presents. Our main present that year consisted of some tat DF bought from the back of a van on Christmas Eve. My parents faces when I said I didn't like it and could I have the receipt son I could exchange it!

1985 I got a flower fairy tree house. My slightly older cousin stood on it, breaking the brittle plastic into a thousand pieces. I was so upset & I couldn't even bring myself to watch Top of the Pops.

The one when I was a new mother and everyone sat in the dining room to eat their dinner while I fed the baby in another room because my mother felt it was inappropriate. Thankfully, DH brought me some food and sat with me regardless.

Went to my parents Xmas Eve about 6 years ago with my boyfriend who I had just moved in with (now my DH). I thought we were having Christmas Eve dinner together before he then went back to his own parents for Xmas day and I joined them Boxing Day…my mum served up jacket potatoes and baked beans! Especially odd as she usually goes to town on the catering.

Me too, I feel that pain every subsequent Christmas...
... yes I know it's meant to be lighthearted, but sometimes people who have lost loved ones, need to be heard.
Mrsconradfisher, I hope you will soon be able to enjoy your Christmas as your mum would hopefully want you to.
It's ok for you to feel joy...

2017 when DS had just turned one. We had family over and I was struggling with sleep deprivation and a tiny, newly-confident walker determined to take the entire house to bits. That Christmas, I felt dreadfully unwell but was determined to prove how “together” I was, cooked a 4-course Christmas meal for 8, poured the wine, did tinkly laughs, etc. I’d just served the last person’s dessert when I keeled over like a sack of shite and woke up in an ambulance being blue-lighted to hospital.

Double lower-lobe pneumonia, and I’ve never looked the same way at a lemon posset since!

My selfish ex "accidentally" bought me a jacket in his size, it just so happened to be the one that he wanted, thankfully that was my last Christmas with him 😂

My Mum died last week too..
I know this is lightheaded but want to give you a hug...
Sorry OP...I had to say that to pp...

Marylou62
Hey, you don't ever need to apologise for being a lovely thoughtful empathetic human being.
I'm sure OP wouldn't berate you for extending good wishes to a fellow Mumsnet contributor.
You take care of you, too...