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

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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.

last year, taking turns to spend time with my mum who was in a hospice dying of lung cancer . We congregated at my sisters and went along in twos and threes, with the ones left behind trying to keep jolly for the sake of the little ones.

She died on 11th January

A different sort of grotty was when DH and I (he was then new BF), spent the whole day in bed, drinking champange cocktails and having wild sex followed by a lavish feast, more champagne, port and a few spliffs..and more sex and champagne

Oh, loads of them involving my step father who doesn't really like me or my sisters and is irritated by us clogging up his immaculately tidy , clean (and rather vile) house. My mum could never WAIT for everyone to go out on boxing day so she can 'get this house straight' - who gives a flying fuck about the fking house, can't you just TALK To your daughters instead?

That'll be why we haven't been since 2002.

and lol at Boden clad forelock tuggers

Last year.

2004. My sil had just died and my db was in all sorts of hell and didn't want to celebrate. My dh was working (no dd then) Christmas Eve and Day so my db came to our house to stay the night. He drank a bottle of whisky on the 24th. He spent Christmas day vomitting and sleeping while I held his hand. Fecking awful.

This year he has re-married and it his baby dd's first Christmas so bring on the Boden-clad carol singers, mince pies and festivities.

Loads from childhood - One that really stands out is when underage youngest brother got steaming drunk on Christmas Eve. He threw up in hallway, bathroom and landing on way up to his room. Threw up in his bed too. Mum went mental and spent hours (bit OTT in my opinion) scrubbing carpets and changing all his sheets and getting them washed! So he ruined Christmas Eve and atmosphere in house was dire. So I got up at 4 am dried and ironed everything she'd washed to try and salvage Christmas Day. (My mum would have sat there in the middle of the lounge doing the hard done by act regardless of what day it was.) Crept back upstairs. Next day Christmas was off anyway because he'd ruined everything and my mum got on with usual day to day stuff thereby punishing us all for his actions including washing drying ironing in the martyr position etc. No mention of me having sorted out the laundry basket and since all the sick had been cleared up the night before all completely unnecesary.

Another one was my (now) dh's first Christmas at ours when we were 19. Dh's first Christmas away from his family - obviously big deal for him. On Christmas Day she attacks him for having no respect even before he's had a chance to say hello, good morning, happy christmas and sit down at the table because when he got up in the night for a wee he'd left the loo seat up! Nutcase!

Never spent another Christmas there.

cyteen - I'm sitting here crying.

This thread just reminds you there are people out there haviing all sorts of Christmases, not just the 'photoshoot' ones.

The year when dd was born, I was in and out of hospital really poorly so couldnt work and exdh had to give up work to care for me and dd, we were absoloutley shit poor, we had beans on toast for xmas dinner and the only presents dd had where from other people.

MIne was xmas 05' when we had just moved to NewZealnd, my mum was rushed in to hospital to have life saving heart surgery.

We spent the day with a man (mum's new b/freind) and his ex wife and thier kids we didn;t know them and it sucked.

many christmasses involving my miserable son-of-a-bitch birth father. Especially the one when he decided I had woken up too early, and in a fit of jealousy because I had taken my stocking into my mother's room to open (clue: they didn't share a room!) threw me out of her bed, swearing and shouting at us both, (having accused us of being 'perverted' because I had climbed into her bed) grabbed the stocking from me, chucked it out and that was that.

mine are just a couple of family rows
not keen n xmas now as it invloves inevitable travelling as we live no where near either of our families
so we spend xmas mornign on the motorway or we have to have people here
last year got home from my parents on boxing day and all I wanted to do was relax, put the washing on etc but the inlaws then arrived for the next 3 nights so no time to relax
and then hey ho, back to work....

got two that stick in mind. One from my childhood when my mum and dad fought all day and demanded we choose (at 6, 4 and 2) between them. On Xmas day!
Then when dd2 was 2 and she went into hideous seizures and we spent Xmas day and Boxing day in hospital.
I generally loathe Xmas. All respite care dries up for the whole period so its actually harder for families with disabled children as we don';t get a break at all.

Mine was the year that DH had lost his job a few months before. We went to the PIL for Christmas and we had the usual 12 adults, 5 kids thing with one of the older children trying to insist on watching his 18 cert film (he was 13, and all but 1 are younger than him), the presents that we'd scraped to buy weren't right for anyone (the last time we bought the nephews and nieces actual presents), evil SIL was sniping at me as we still didn't have any children. And then FIL got really drunk and had a go at DH for being a 'doley scrounger, living off his wife'. It degenerated very fast from there, and cumulated in MIL and I crying in the kitchen together.

There was also the one where I was totally on my own for Christmas Day, and I had a bad dose of the flu. The upside was that now DH got his mate to come and get me in his car on the 27th, and I spent until after New Year tucked up in bed in their shared house with an ever changing cast of men sitting on the bed (no communal sitting room so all socialising was done on beds).