Mkay, looks like there are a lot of Dopers for whom the holiday season is not particularly merry at present.
So how about we share our amusing Christmas-related experiences? I was telling this story to a friend & it occurred to me that it could be shared here as well:
So I was at Burlington Coat Factory yesterday, buying a few Santa toys for the babies & some underwear for Hubby. So romantic, underwear for Christmas. I’m standing there in the line, fat lady buying fat underwear for her fat husband. And it is taking forever. Forever and ever. Like, time to start counting the ceiling tiles. The older lady in front of me (who resembled the one I saw in toys who farted - not 3 feet away from me & she farts! And then one of the toys responded “Pop Goes the Weasel”. I’m not making this up) is buying a whole wardrobe. And the checkout girl has to handle each item 3 times, between ringing it up, removing the security tags, and bagging the things.
So I’m standing there hating everyone, feeling not one iota of Christmas cheer.
And I hear a commotion from way back in the line. A crashing of glass, a sigh, some chatter, a thud. I turn to look and see what was the matter, and watch as one of those glittery holiday dress displays falls over, slowly. The freestanding kind, with four arms and merchandise displayed on all sides. So just as it falls, it hits the one next to it. More dresses start to tumble. And they hit the next one. It wobbles a bit…hangs on… and then falls, taking the next one with it. And so on. It had to have been at least 15 displays that fell, slowly, one after the other. The carnage was unbelievable. (actually no shoppers were hurt, it happened so slowly everyone had ample opportunity to move away).
Funniest damn thing I’d seen all day.
And not one person in the place (besides me) laughed! I wanted to applaud, but that might have been unseemly.
I would have laughed. I would have laughed so hard, the store manager would have been calling for security to escort me off the premises.
Nothing funny has happened thus far, although many, many years ago, the HallKids and I went to church with a friend. Now, we’re about as “churchgoers” as a pack of wild dogs, but we go to a Christmas service as a favor to my friend, who didn’t want to go alone. Everything is cool–we’re standing in church, towards the back, and we managed to blunder our way through a few Christmas songs. At some point, they pass out candles, and everyone probably knows the whole “Take a light and pass it along” thing, until everyone is holding a candle. Then, for some reason, as we’re all standing there with hot wax dripping down onto our hands, they begin to sing another song. HallGirl juggles her lit candle, and her song book, until whosh I see smoke coming from her head. Yep, it seems that she’d caught her hair on fire. Minor chaos and the stench of burnt hair ensued.
Let’s just say it was a cold day in hell before we ever entered another church.
And, no, HallGirl wasn’t injured. Her hair was a bit crispy in the front, but I trimmed her bangs, and it was hardly noticable.
I was standing in my sideyard last night tending the grill and observing the luminous monstrosity that is a neighbor family’s Christmas display. A company came out last week and 5 people spent all Saturday wrapping trees, bushes, eaves, etc. $900.00 will get you a lot of lights, maybe even too many because they’d been on for about a minute when Pow! the whole house was plunged into darkness.
A little later, first there’s swinging flashlights parading through the house and then the inside lights and TV came on again, then the outside multi-colored display comes on and Pow! out goes everything again.
More flashlights, inside lights and TV on again and then I saw him come outside, unplug the right-hand side of the house and turn the rest on. So that’s where things ended, with the left side of the house bathed in green and red and blue and white and the other side totally dark.
Well, I don’t know how funny, really this is. I found it amusing.
Two years ago, my cousin (then 5 years old) was in his church’s Christmas pagent, Christmas Eve. The immediate fam and I don’t usually go to mass with them, as we’re not Catholic, but we had to go for his sake. He was one of the ‘stars’: he carried and held a big shiny star on a tall pole. Only…it was heavy. His arms started to get tired. It kept wavering - dip-jerk-straighten-etc. But the poor kid was soon exhausted. It dipped further and further down…
Until, on the upswing, he smacked the Virgin Mary in the face. She then dropped baby Jesus, and started bawling.
I’m definitely going to hell for this, but I could not stop laughing. My poor cousin was absolutely mortified…
About twenty years ago, my sister was in a Christmas pageant/play/whatever thing as well… as one of the Three Kings. My sister, bless her, was a strange child, with more than a few OCD tendencies. One of these quirks was her flat-out refusal to do anything without carrying her purse… her Pepto-Bismol, near neon pink vinyl discount store purse that she LOVED beyond all reason. Did I mention that this purse had a long shoulder strap? Suffice to say, that the King as interpreted by my young sister came out on stage swinging her pink purse like a streetwalker. People were in hysterics.
Well, I just had one at lunchtime. I went to Hallmark to get my sister a b’day card, and saw a sign reading “50 Percent Off All Precious Moments,” and thought, “yeah, you’re tellin’ me, brother.”
I don’t remember this, but when I was little (probably 5 or so), I did something in our church Christmas program that I’ve never been able to live down. It’s my mom’s fault, really. She’s the one who dressed me in those stupid knee socks that kept falling down. So I kept having to pull them up while I was on stage. Everyone was laughing. But they weren’t just laughing at me. They were laughing at the girl next to me, who kept pulling her knee socks up, too, even though they weren’t falling down. How dare she copy me? So I get mad and start glaring at her. Hilarity all around!
I still have old ladies who remember that come up and tell me about it more than 20 years later. At least I made the highlight reel of someone’s life!
The funniest thing I can remember at Christmas was visiting my grandparents. My grandmother bless her heart decorated the worst and I mean the WORST Christmas tree EVER. First I think my grandfather purchased someone’s dead tree from last year so there was never a lot to work with. They always looked half dead and there were pine needles everywhere on the floor.
They would put the tree in front of the large picture window in the living room but the side facing the window never had an ornament or light even close to it. When it came to putting the ornaments on the tree she literally threw an ornament at the tree as she walked past. I shit you not. We watched her several times in an evening of visiting walk past the tree, pick up any ornament from the box and toss it on the tree. She had pretty good accuracy as the ornaments stayed on the branch but of course it could be backwards or upside down. Where it fell is were it stayed. This happened every year and our family had a hard time keeping a straight face during any of her decorating. We would leave the room just to be able to snicker without hurting her feelings.
I still can not try to explain this tree to people with out busting into laughter. It was just so funny and so was she. I don’t think we ever left their home without feeling warm and fuzzy.
Both my grandparents are passed on now but man what I would give to see that Christmas tree this year.
Just that memory alone has helped with my Christmas scroogism. I think I will defiantly put up my tree this weekend and I think I will “toss” a special one on their for Grandma
