Bad,bad,bad christmas thread

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I can be faithful to your title, Beck.

Three years ago - the first time we had Trep Jr’s then-girlfriend staying. They arrived on Christmas eve, and the plan was to have a special evening meal together (as she was a nurse, she was working Christmas day). As dinner time rolled around, I felt less and less hungry, to the point where eventually I had to say, you guys go ahead and eat - I’ll see if I fancy something later.

It was just at the moment they were starting to eat that I literally ran past the dining table to the bathroom, barely getting there in time to start 48 hours of vomiting and diarrhea. I was too ill to even risk going to bed that night, sleeping in a chair with a bucket by my side. Pharmacies were closed, doctors’ surgery closed… in the end Trep Jr’s girlfriend was detailed to “obtain” some oral rehydration stuff for me when he dropped her off for work in the morning. My Christmas Day feasting was limited to several glasses of Dioralyte. It truly was a bad, bad, bad Christmas.

Glass half full moment - I lost a kilo over the holidays that year. How 'bout that? :smiley:

j

22

Okay, it turns out I have a bad, bad, bad memory because upon review I see that one of my bad, bad, bad New Year stories was a Christmas story after all.

I’ve had chronic bronchitis for many years. Occasionally, I’ve had serious enough bouts that I was coughing my guts out for weeks, and had some (fortunately brief) moments where I couldn’t breathe at all and it felt like I was going to self-strangle. Like my lungs were plugged up with bubble gum.

This happened a week or so before Christmas, 2013. It got so bad I went to the ER, where they kept me overnight and pumped me up with antibiotics and methylprednisolone (the IV version of prednisone) and albuterol. IIRC, I was there literally on Christmas night.

I asked the SDMB for advice and ended up blogging the whole episode in real-time. So that’s my bad, bad, bad Christmas story, in its full gory detail, all in this thread right here ! Thank you, all you Dopers who kept me company those two bad, bad, bad weeks.

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE! Two years after that, it happened again, in the New Year week. So I ended up having a bad, bad, bad New Year too, and it was even worse. They kept me in the ER for two nights that time! More prednisone! More methylpresnisolone! More albuterol and levalbuterol!

I’ve been huffing on various inhalers and other meds ever since, which has seemed to keep it under control reasonably well most of the time. But I live in mortal terror of ever catching a cold again, which seems to be the kind of precipitating event that triggers this, especially around this time of year.

So there’s all my bad, bad, bad Christmas and New Years stories.

Bleah.

23

One year, back in the '80s, I was working as a typesetter, and on Christmas Eve, we were having a party, with little work to be done. The salesman called all his clients and told him that we were all just sitting around, and they could send over any work they had. The work came in, all due on the 26th, and we had to stay at work until it was all done, the morning of the 26th. The salesman, on the other hand, was at home for the holiday. Within months the bastard had died. Karma.

24

Wow! These are all great. I love reading them.
More, more, more!!!
(Bad, bad, bad is relative. It can mean what you want it to mean)

25

I was a kid. Every girl had a Barbie, and we lived, ate, drank, slept Barbie.

A commercial started running in December for something called the “Deluxe Dream Kitchen.” Four pieces: sink, stove, refrigerator, and dishwasher. A table and four chairs. And skads of teeny, tiny accessories like plates, miniature foods, milk bottles…

I wanted it. Desperately.

We’d gone to a grocery store, and the place had it on display! It was on a high shelf, above the produce.

Well, about a week or so before Christmas, I’d gone out to the garage, and I stopped dead in my tracks: on the chest freezer was the Deluxe Dream Kitchen!

I was a kid, and I didn’t know how to keep my mouth shut. I still have that problem today, sometimes. I ran in the house, excited about my discovery. My mother shut me down completely. She didn’t know what I was talking about, not yours, none of your business, etc etc.

I already had Santa figured out. I had put two and two together a few years before. Oh, but the denials just flowed from her lips!

Well, it was under the tree, waiting for me on Christmas morning!

I just loved that toy. It fit Barbie perfectly!

Fast forward…

Something triggered the memories of my Deluxe Dream Kitchen. I started surfing the internet, just for nostalgic purposes. I saw pictures. Ohhhh. I enlarged them to see the detail, and it was like traveling in a time machine.

I ended up on eBay. I bought one. I told myself a lot of stories to convince myself to buy it. My daughter loves miniatures, of all kinds. My granddaughters (COTU#1 and COTU#2) are the right age.

The girls have enjoyed the kitchen, but their delight was nowhere near the magnitude of my initial infatuation. My daughter understands I was trying to preserve a moment in time, and she actually thinks the kitchen is pretty cool. She is the Keeper of the Kitchen. She gets it out for the girls to play with, and then puts it away for safekeeping when they are done.

The Deluxe Dream Kitchen…it was around 1962…
~VOW

26

:smiley: No, quite the contrary. I was taught gun safety and how to shoot when I was probably seven or eight years old. My liberal self was even in the Junior NRA, back when it was a useful organization.

27

My niece Hanna had just turned 1 yo the week before Christmas, 1996. At that time, my extended family celebrated together at various homes both Eve and Day. We were all excited to have this little toddler around at Christmas, playing with her, carrying her around, kissing her even though my sister, her mother mentioned that Hanna didn’t seem to be feeling well. At our last celebration on Christmas Day, as my husband was parking the car, I noticed my sister, Hanna’s mom, still sitting in her driver’s seat with her head on the steering wheel. Apparently she wasn’t feeling well.

Christmas Day evening, after our last celebration and we were all back at our own homes, it began. All of us, except for my mom and daughter became violently ill (about 10 of us). We threw up all night long. Some of us lasted one more day before falling ill. It was like dominoes - one after another. When we gathered together again on New Year’s Eve we were all telling the tales of our horrifying sickness. Some of us didn’t even bother going back to bed that night, we just laid on our cool bathroom floors waiting for the next round of puking. Diarrhea was also involved in some of the cases. We still talk about that Christmas and laugh when we remember how horrible it was. We fondly call it the Christmas of the HannaVirus (a play on hantavirus). Was it Hanna’s fault? Who knows, it could have been food poisoning of some sort too.

28

My NVMs upthread were originally the obligatory “You’ll shoot yer eye out, kid!” But then later I saw Beck beat me to it.

29

Yep, I’m fast, ain’t I?
I’m kidding you. It’s a common enough assertion when a gun is a Christmas gift.
God knows we’ve all seen ‘that’ movie.

30

A corny movie with a memorable line. Well played.

31

Here’s my “older” Christmas story. My brother and SIL were remodeling their home, literally raising the roof and trying to do much of the work themselves to save money. They had a 2-y.o. child at the time. SIL’s family is big, big into celebrations and holidays. Bro Tim and wife invited everyone over to help them stain wood trim on Xmas day. So we call came, dressed in our warmest trashy clothes and bearing a food item. Bro’s MIL came dressed to the nines and proceeded to scold us on how Xmas was a holiday and not a day to work on stuff.

We sat her down and told her that this was our gift to her daughter’s family and that she should never trash talk a gift that was freely given. She apologized (only time ever) and babysat while the rest of us whooped it up, stained wood and each other and made mad dashes to convenience stores to look for rubber gloves and rags to use for more staining. We had a great time. We enjoyed an unusual meal (because only an electric skillet and outlets were available for hot food), all crowded together in a tiny, warm basement. We joked, laughed, got all the staining done and a bunch of little tasks besides. Cleaned up after the meal, using the laundry tub. In many ways, it was the best Christmas Day ever. And my bro’s family was able to come out of the basement and sleep in real bedrooms by mid-January.

32

Most memorable gift for me was GI Joe Astronaut with space suit and capsule.
https://images.app.goo.gl/xLiwhXehYbyEyUdS7

I put the capsule in the bathtub just like the real Astronauts got retrieved from the sea. Uh, the capsule leaked. Joe and his spacesuit got wet. It did dry and the water eventually dripped out of the capsule. :wink: It was a fun toy.

33

At the payroll processing company I worked for 25 years ago I went in to work on christmas eve expecting a short night so I could be with my new wife on christmas day. No. They had let most of the staff leave early and left me tons of stuff to do. As the night became later and later and onto christmas day I was getting more and more pissed and called my boss asking for someone else to come in and why the hell was I stuck there while they let others go. He said too bad and if I didnt like it I should find another job.

I did about 3 months later and a good thing because shortly after my job was outsourced and the whole place shut down about 2 years later.

34

A good story.

Up until a few years ago my job was in building maintenance. One of the “perks” was they shut the place down for Christmas and it was only me working “fire watch” and maybe another person in the building who still had to be there for deliveries. I dont mind, I get paid extra. Its also the only time of the year we shut off the lights.

Well it is kind of fun to go around on a bicycle thru this normally loud, busy plant now dark and creepy but normally I just napped or read.

Now of course they run the plant 24/7 365 so we never shut down.

Anyone else had to pull fire watch on Christmas?

35

Yes, military. I was a young Marine, either a Private or a PFC. Christmas 1980.

As we say in the military, “Shit rolls downhill.” At an early age you learned your place in the world.

36

Awww, geez. I thought Bekkers woulda liked my Deluxe DreammKitchen!
~VOW

37

Usually, I hate traveling during the holidays, but I have to admit I’ve had a few enjoyable experiences on the road at Christmas.

I once ran a training course at our center in Dundee, Scotland that ended two days before Christmas. The Company managed to get me on a flight back to the family home in PA on Christmas eve; Edinburgh-PHL I believe. The plane was a large one, something like a 767, and there were only about 40 passengers aboard. I had a whole row to myself, and the flight attendants kept the drinks flowing pretty much the entire flight.

When I was living in Paris, neither my girlfriend nor I had any relatives within 3000 miles, so we got in the habit of splitting town for a few days, leaving on Christmas morning, to take advantage of the empty highways and trains. My favorite was a trip to Amsterdam; the conductors handed out sweets to all the passengers as they checked their tickets.

38

Christmas Day, six years ago.

I spent that day in the hospital, awaiting the (quite early) arrival of our oldest daughter.

She was born three weeks early, but perfectly healthy.

As it turns out, though, her birthday is December 26, by about five minutes.
Edit: I’m the father, not the mother. Obviously a tougher Christmas for my wife than it was for me.

39

I loved your story. Reminds me of my baby sis wanting Barbies dream house. Santa Claus didn’t get the memo. Santa/Daddy read dollhouse. So she got a dollhouse with Little People. (I believe that was a brand, ‘Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down’) She was very unhappy til she found out none of her friends got one either.
They were pretty pricey.

40

ALL Barbie stuff was hideously expensive! The Deluxe Dream Kitchen was NOT made by Mattel, so it didn’t cost my parents any appendages.

When I received the one I bought from eBay last year, I spent a long time just looking at everything being enthralled all over again.
~VOW