What was your grottiest Christmas? (Antidote to smug 'traditions' thread)

[fircone]

I was beginning to puke reading that thread: "Oh, we have 467 people all singing in our barn, and the villagers have a tradition of tugging their forelocks at our dcs, all clad in their Boden pyjamas..."

Anyway, my worst Christmas was after my father died. My mother cancelled Christmas, stayed in bed and refused to participate. I sat downstairs with a bottle of Iceland wine (everywhere else was closed by the time I came home from work on Christmas Eve) and watched Casualty, in which most people were killed in unfestive pile-ups.

Fircone, my worst was also after my Dad died. He'd died a month before Christmas, he and Mum had been planning on spending Christmas with my brother so she carried on with what they'd planned as it's what he had wanted. I wanted to be with her too, but had already agreed to go to ILs. ILs were lovely people but FIL very insensitive in asking about the indepth details of Dad's death (they were very good friends but lived a long way apart) and they were very fixed in their Christmas traditions (no cracker pulling til after you've eaten the meal - try telling that to a 3 yr old). So not a great Christmas, and the last one we spent outside our own home.
Hope you have a better one this year fircone.

Sorry for you sad christmas, but pmsl at the 467 people singing in a barn

We had just lost Mum a couple of weeks before hand but I tried to make the effort as Mum loved Christmas (and it was her birthday too).

No one came to the table, no presents were exchanged and my teetotal father wolfed a bottle of whisky and stayed in his room.

I might add that this was the pattern for the next few years....meh.

Last Christmas was pretty dire. DD2 was recovering from bad flu. We all got sickness bug. I gave it to my elderly mum, who was s'posed to be coing round to us. She stayed at home vomiting instead. My brother the same. DP got s&d again on Xmas Eve so his mum cancelled and stayed at home on her own. They all hated us for giving them the bug.

lol fircone.

First christmas after my dad died was awful too - I spent it with just mum and we were both as miserable as sin. We ended up glumly eating a layer of a two layer box of chocoaltes each and screaming at each other about nothing in particular. I stormed out only to break down on the M4 - finally got home to emptly flat cold flat at midnight and sobbed myself to sleep.

Oh, I forgot about a Christmas three years ago when ds1 had some sort of evil operation on his bum but we got him home for Christmas Eve (his birthday)...he had to lie flat being miserable while we were all ninging about dressed as angels and being cheerful.

Last christmas was pretty crap. We went to my dsis who had 18, all my family plus her in laws.
She was really ill, her dh wasn't drinking and was fighting with my dmum. the inlaws were rude and nasty. Me and dss cooked the dinner, dss started drinking rum and coke in the morning so was an idiot by the time we served up.
we had secret santa and I gave fabulous presents and got crap.

I found Family Christmases increasingly awful throughout my adolescence. Every year my father would say to any enquirers that we were just having a quiet Christmas this year, as if most years we had a riotously good time...as if.

On Christmas Day we would rise at the usual god-awful early hour, in my parents' freezing house in Norwich, to eat a normal sort of breakfast and assemble for an arid exchange of gifts. To each one (and you weren't allowed usually to know what you were getting, it had to be a surprise) you were expected to exclaim Oh How Lovely and kiss the giver.

Some time later we would all go out for a Bracing Walk in the freezing bloody Norfolk countryside, and then return for Christmas Dinner. Cooked by my mother, who is an excellent Indian/fusion cook but is awful at roasted things, this would be turkey (yuk) and nasty things to accompany it (I never saw the point of roast potatoes till a few years ago DP made them) and then Bought Christmas Pudding. Every year we would be required to turn off the lights and douse the damn thing in burning brandy, and my father would say 'Isn't Christmas Pud lovely. Really, we should have it on the 24th of every month'. And we'd eat it. (Horrible stuff.)

And then at the usual early hour we would retire to our freezing bedrooms.

I still find the prospect of Christmas makes me quite literally shudder and retch.

Although my parents have hosted some fab christmases, ther have been a few disasters. In chronlogical order:

1. The year Mum went to collect the turkey on Christmas eve, left it in back of car as it was too heavy for her to lift out with bad back, then asked dad to take a load of rubbish to he tip. On his return, she asked him to bring the turkey from the car...."what turkey - there's nothing in the car...". Lucky seagulls at the tip!!

1. The year my mother finally cracked under the strain of my father's ongoing affair and threw him out of the house on Christmas day, completely beside herself....I threw a turkey sandwich and a clean shirt in a carrier bag for him as he escaped down the path under a hail of christmas presents. My mother was lying face down on the hall floor howling, my younger sister (who had known nothing of the affair or any trouble) was locked in the bathroom screaming with the shock and betrayal of being kept in the dark while she thought Mum was pining away with a serious disease) (all reconciled and sorted 10 painful months later).

1. (the happy ending!!!) Arriving at parents house for Christmas, late Christmas Eve in the ice and snow to find that they had forgotten to check the oil and the calor gas (they live in a village with no mains gas so rely on oil and calor gas for heating and cooking) and both were down to very very last dregs.

I went to stay with my mum and step dad who were running a restaurant in a barn. I had flu. On xmas eve the cat attacked me and scratched my eye - it swelled shut and went purple. I had to waitress for parents as they needed the help - but had a fever and could hardly see so i coughed and wheezed and moaned and hobbled. The low point was when one of the customers who had come to xmas lunch in an orange boiler suit, and old grumpy farmer man - requested a different waitress because I looked like a miserable cow. And he tipped her, saying loudly 'don't share it with that one!'

Sorry to laugh, Blu, but ha ha ha. Your Xmas no. 2 made me laugh out loud. At least crap Christmases are memorable. If they're all magical that must get a bit boring.

Nearly all of my childhood christmasses resulted in step dad getting home late from his "lunchtime" drink and therefore the dinner being burnt, mom having a go at him and him beating the crap out of her (and me if I got in the way, which invariably I did). Lots of throwing things around, lots of tears, lots of Christmas dinners flung around (bits of gravy soaked turkey could usually be picked out of the christmas tree for weeks after ), him storming out to try and find a pub open on christmas afternoon and me and mom dreading his return

Oooh - happy days

Boco
That's so miserable it's funny- sorry

Absolute worst, most miserable Xmas ever was the year that I broke up with ex, was flat broke due to lack of maintence from said ex, stuck in a dilapitated, unheated rented house (which was all we could afford on my wage). Had to borrow money from my best mate to pay for Xmas pressies, could barely afford a nut roast for dinner and was stuck in the midst of a very bad depressive episode, with a not very happy toddler.

To cap it all, ex picked up ds on Boxing Day and forgot to tell me that he was keeping him for 2 days, which led to me spending the entire day in tears, whilst trying to track him down. My vision of hell looks quite a lot like that Xmas.

Nothing nearly as sad.

My first one with xh. It was my first christmas not at home and with family and I cried for half the day.

We were in a rented house and the gas was cut off during the night (still no idea why) so we had no heating and only a hob to cook xmas dinner. Our friends should have been coming over from Bristol but their car had broken down so they were stuck too.
We had a lovely champage and salmon breakfast and opening presents but the minute I spoke to my mum I just wept. We had a useless far too big turkey out fully defrosted that wouldn't fit in the fridge and then spent two hours walking around in the rain trying to find somewhere to eat that wasn't fully booked or closed.

o-o-o-o-oh, yes, magic has to be earned!

I went back to work after Christmas no 2 for some light relief (with the vision of my mother attacking my father with a wooden clothes horse festooned with damp pants still haunting my mind) to find that at my friend's house her Grandad had died in the middle of christmas dinner, at the table.

Mine was also just after my father died. I was 15 we didn't put the decorations up and went to stay at my auntie's house, they tried to make it nice but it was miserable which was to be expected. The next year was also strange as lots of people ivited us round so my mum and I spent the whole of Christmas day stopping off at peoples' houses for coffee etc so as not to offend them! The next year was better.

fircone was that a typo? Blus xmas no2 isn't remotely funny.

Oh yes, I'd forgotten the Christmas when I had a toxic combination of flu, a seriously broken heart and pelvic inflammatory disease (with associated worries that even if I did meet another man I'd be infertile) and frankly just wanted to die. Literally.

Or indeed the following Christmas when the chap I'd been having an on-off fling with while he and his partner enjoyed an Open Marriage (yes, this was stupid of me, OK?) ditched me by long-distance phone call on Christmas Eve - I was staying with my sister and her new baby - to tell me actually his partner wanted him back after all and they'd decided they were Soulmates.

So sad .... yet so funny !

My worst was when DS was born prem just before christmas and we had to spend a week in SCBU. Horrible.

But all forgotton now !

Just me and my elderly great-aunt at my parent's house (they were away). I am glad at least Christmas Day went ok - cooked it for the first time myself for the two of us. Then she phoned early on Boxing Day asking where her dead sister was as she couldn't find her anywhere... Dementia is incredibly shocking when it's someone you've known and loved suddenly saying all these strange things.

fircone I know exactly what you mean 'all our decorations are handmade even the baby gets invoved this year we have a bunting cupcake theme blah blah blah......'
my worst xmas was whem I had a missed mc dh was in the states flew home flew back after I had the erpc then we had to go to outlaws walked into church on xmas morning and 3 people asked me when baby was due
mil and fil had been sworn to secrecy about the pregnancy anyway but then she couldn't be bothered to tell all the people she'd told that I'd had a mc
she also rang me the evening before the erpc to say better out than in love
happpy days

We had a christmas in SCBU too - and they forgot our food - so we had to share a tuna sandwich. Dp got drunk on whisky, we had a big fight and I sat and cried loudly over dd2.

motherinferior, doesn't sound hideous to me. I would treasure the family element of that. You sound oddly bitter.