Christmas 1994. My BIL had committed suicide a little over a week before (on my wife’s birthday) and the funeral was just before Christmas. Christmas and New Years were spent trying to secure and clean his house. It sucked big time. But in the end it helped all the family pull together and get stronger.
When I turned 16 and got my driver’s license. I got the car for the evening. I was supposed to meet my friend David, his then girlfriend Trisha and another girl for a night driving on the drag. The second girl didn’t come so I spent the night driving while David and Trish made out in the back seat.
And yes, being the doormat that I was I put up with that for 3 hours.
I recall one particular Thanksgiving Day spent listening to my insufferable, shrewish mother complain the whole time about what we didn’t have. Talk about defeating the purpose of the holiday!
Jesus, some of these stories are depressing. (And funny! Sorry.)
My worst Christmas started on Christmas Eve - something I ate at breakfast gave me food poisoning. I spent the afternoon groaning on the floor feeling like shit. My mom took me to the doctor’s. She told my little brother to take me in first while she parked the car.
The building had several independent clinics. I felt so awful that I could barely read the signs, plus my Korean wasn’t great at the time so I wasn’t sure what the difference was between all of them. So I stumbled into the closest one. As I opened my mouth to speak to the receptionist, a wave of nausea came over me and I had to sprint to the bathroom to relieve myself of my stomach contents. My brother trailed behind me cautiously.
“Uh, the lady says we should go to the clinic upstairs…”
So I crawl upstairs and finally see a doctor. The doctor prescribes me enough pills to kill an elephant and a shot of something. The nurse comes in and sticks the needle in my ass. A second after she injects me with god knows what, I black out for a second then immediately feel like I’m going to sick.
After a second trip to the bathroom my mom takes us to my uncle’s house (where we usually celebrate Christmas) and drops us off there while she goes back to work. I drink a glass of water, immediately bring it back up, and spend the rest of Christmas Eve sleeping it off.
More rambling then anything else.
The year my brother was killed in a plane crash would lead to as shitty a Xmas as you would expect when we all got together. My brother’s step-son was acting out so badly towards everyone, that eventually it would cause a split later on (along with other things) between my widowed sister-in-law and the rest of my family.
The following is really lame compared to others, but I’ll never forget the isolation of feeling so alone and vulnerable during the holidays.
I was working at a full-service gas station when I was a naive 19 to help pay for my college expenses. It was an easy gig: pump gas, clean windshields, check oil, etc. I would show up at two in the afternoon and work with my senior partner till he left at six (most of the time), and I would stay open till 10 and the spend about 35 – 40 minutes closing up the station.
I’d started in September, but whenever the boss was around it was always tense. The boss was the first Fundamentalist Christian I’d ever known up close. My more experienced partner, Bill, was unfazed by him, but I was always feeling that he never like me. One day, he pulled me aside and told me it should never take more than 20 minutes to close up the station and he expected better. Try as I could, I could never get it done in less than 35 minutes when working alone. So to avoid future conflict, I would punch out at 10:20 pm. Stupid me. :rolleyes:
He liked to spy. Every now and then, he would park inconspicuously across the street in a field and watch us in the evening (or me, if I was working alone). Creepy. One day I told a co-worker, that he was across the street watching us. The co-worker wasn’t sure so he asked mechanic who was working on his own car in the repair shop if that was the boss’s car. He replied in the affirmative. So the co-worker suggest we all wave at him, and we did. A few seconds later, he started up his car and drove away. He never talked about why he did it. Ironically, the esprit de corp, if you can believe it, was pretty high when he wasn’t around. (I regret to this day never calling the cops about a suspicious vehicle).
On Thanksgiving Day, I was told I could close the station an hour early so I could spend time with my family for Thanksgiving. Which I thought was odd, with all of the holiday traffic. I’d never missed a Thanksgiving in my life (which for our family was something we loved to do), so I was pretty happy that I could continue the family tradition.
It was busy all afternoon. Six o’ clock rolled around and my partner left. Five minutes later–I got slammed with more cars at the station than I had seen before or since then: at one point I had two columns with seven-to-ten rows of cars going down the block for the next four and half hours with no break. We were the only ones open in the city that evening next to the freeway–everyone else was closed.
Note that there were only four hoses (two with 87 octane and two with 90 octane) and this was a full service station. These were the days when cash was kept in carts which held locked drawers of cash along with credit card imprinters sitting on each end of the pump “island”. If you wanted to use a credit card, you had to call it in to get an approval code and add it to the credit card receipt. At times, I was handling up to eight cars at a time (they pumped, but they still had to pay–and I still had to offer “full-service”). I was so busy, that people started filling up the tanks without me and then left cash for me on top of the pumps and drove off. I was never sure if I had a drive off that day, but the stress of trying to stay on top of it was still overwhelming. Then there was the sadness I was going to miss Thanksgiving dinner for the very first time in my life, and all these freaking people who don’t seem to understand that I’m a little overwhelmed here, anger at a boss for not providing additional help, and knowing he would “quietly” chew me out the next day. Worst of all, I didn’t even have the time to go to the bathroom, or even call for help. By the time I chased everyone out, it was almost 11 'o clock.
I get home to a bunch of cold leftovers; everybody gotten tired of waiting for me and went to bed. I never felt so dejected in my life up to that point. I knew I’d fucked up at work, was sure I’d disappointed my family at home along with myself (turns out they understood–and thought my boss was a jerk), and I still had to go back to work the next day.
Next day he chewed me out for loosing 20.00 dollars on previous day’s sales (which was something like +$1000). I tried to explain to him that it was the busiest it had ever been and I needed help, but…he wasn’t interested. I think I later partially paid for it out of my own pocket (because I felt so bad for letting him down:(. …OTOH, I did charge the clock with my full time for closing up…
Yeah, its obvious I let him walk all over me. But I just assumed that because he was a Christian he’d act like one (insert inappropriate comment here). Now looking back, I realized the boss was using the prosperity Gospel as cover for his behavior. That occurred when he said announced to us his pastor was coming in for some service. His demeanor changed to one of niceness and respect for everybody (which now that I think about was kind of inspiring, if somewhat goofy), until the minister left–then it slid back into perdition. Sadly for me, the person who seemed to suffer the most was his young wife: every time I saw her, she looked absolutely miserable. Her body language screamed “I submit to my husband, because it is God’s will that he will have dominion over me.”
He-who-shall-not-be-named later ran for mayor of the city. He lost. He thinks he lost because Satan’s hold on Sodom-of-the-Coast blinded town’s sinners to a righteous Bible believing Christian. But he lost because he was (is?) a Bible believing asshole*. Maybe he’s mellowed in the last 30 years, but I kind of doubt it. I think he moved to Colorado Springs. If so, I hope he had his kids vaccinated.
I’ll try to lighten up the mood with this story:
I decided not to fly home for Xmas with my parents. My landlord invites me to Xmas dinner. So I get dressed up with a sports jacket, tie, and slacks and head up the stairs.
I note the big table and the kiddie table. I was 35 at the time. Anybody want to guess which table I was asked to sit at? Seriously, a true story. I moved out seven weeks later.
*He told a newspaper reporter that the reason California was suffering a drought “in those days” was because of sin (which is a code word for “sex outside marriage”). Then, after the election, allegedly, it rained like hell, so to speak. Maybe the angels were crying over something he did?
The combination of an Xmas Birthday and a mother who detested me could make me own this thread. Not only did I never get anything extra on that day, I never got what I wanted. My mother would always finds way to mess it up.
I couldn’t have my favoirte breakfast (French toast and bacon) cause it was “too filling to eat before Christmas dinner.” Christmas dinner was always rare roast beef (I prefer it well done), mashed potatoes and peas–not the ham, pineapple and sweet potatoes I preferred.
And dessert–always a whie cake with white frosting and an Xmas motif. I prefered chocolate cake, but my younger sister didn’t like it, so I didn’t get it. I did get some candles and Happy Birthday sung, but that was it.
I’ve been fortunate. Some of these are heartbreaking.
My worst Easter was when I was about 9 years old.
My mother made up wonderful gift baskets for our family and the best part was the gigantic chocolate bunny in the center.
This year, the bunny was different - it was white.
For some reason I thought that white chocolate was regular chocolate dyed white and I took a big bite of bunny ear.
My mouth was filled with the most horrible WRONG flavor and couldn’t chew and I couldn’t swallow this gunk. I just stood there with tears running down my face. My mother didn’t notice my misery and got my sister to pose next to me and wanted me to smile.
When she noticed I was crying, she sent me to my room for being a selfish little girl who didn’t appreciate her basket.
I was too upset to even explain and I spit the bunny ear out the window of my bedroom.
I had an experience like this on Halloween, too. Only I was exhausted from working in the physics lab, so I didn’t even get to enjoy what had made me so tired.
I can’t hold a candle to most of these stories. Here’s my own tale, starting with some background:
My wife has an extremely rare condition called McCune-Albright Syndrome. Basically, the effect of the syndrome is that the brain and the reproductive organs don’t communicate, so the chances of getting pregnant naturally are just about zero. Still, the medical literature out there showed that, if you can get over the “getting pregnant” hurdle, women with MAS have normal pregnancies and deliveries. In 2005, we decided to go for it, since the longer we waited, the greater the chance of Down syndrome or other defects.
We went to a fertility clinic, and decided that our best chance was in vitro fertilization. Because of the cost, we would have just one shot at it; even cutting corners by using donated medications, we’d have to beg, borrow, and steal to gather up the $10K necessary. The whole extended family pitched in, and we were off to the races.
Over the next two months, my wife was a “perfect storm” of unpredictable hormone activity. Despite hating needles myself, I somehow gave her a total of 84 shots, which I’m quite certain was less thrilling for her than me. Some nights she was crying because every nerve ending was on fire, begging me not to stick her again. But we did 'em all, followed the program exactly. In November, the eggs were harvested, fertilized, and implanted. We got the positive pregnancy test the day before Thanksgiving, making it the Best Thanksgiving Ever. Everyone who had pitched in was so happy, and the baby presents started flying.
And then the following week, my wife called me at work. HCG levels, which should be doubling every day, have dropped from 80 to 4. Below 5 means “not pregnant.” Show’s over, no baby for us. We didn’t have the money to try again, even if we were physically and emotionally capable. I got to spend the weeks before Christmas packing up the baby presents people had given to us, so that my wife wouldn’t have to look at them. I never told her, but while I was alone in the closet, I looked at the cover of a book we’d been given, “Love You Forever,” and I broke down completely.
In the happy glow that followed the pregnancy, we’d agreed to host the big family Christmas at our house. So, a couple of weeks later, our house was filled with family, including close to a dozen little kids. My wife tried to be a good hostess, but all she could think while watching the kids run around was, “This is what I’ll never have.” So, worst Christmas ever.
Epilogue:
Life loves to throw curve balls.
After that Christmas, my wife had to get away, so we drove to visit her dad’s side of the family. We started talking about adoption on the way back, and settled on adopting from China. We started the process and began the long and arduous task of gathering all the paperwork and doing all the applications necessary.
We got the last document we needed for the adoption from the Chinese consulate in San Francisco on September 9th. Also on that day, my wife took a pregnancy test, and it was positive. To my knowledge, no woman with MAS has ever gotten pregnant without medical assistance.
Since then, Christmas has looked like this.
Could have been worse. She could have been at Pearl Harbor. 
I remembered what was possibly my father’s worst Christmas. One of his brothers was the navigator on a cargo flight that crashed in California, killing all the crew, on Christmas Eve. I remembered meeting the guy one time, so it was not devastating for me, and I was too little to realize that it must have been a big deal for my father. I doubt I understood he even had any siblings at that time. It was our first Christmas after moving to Texas. Dad left right after for the funeral … by bus, and he always refused to fly after that. Never flew again for the rest of his life. If he had a worse Christmas, it would have been his last one, spent in ICU with the aneurysm that he finally died from.
Maybe it’s because I have a 5-year-old, but this hit me like a punch in the stomach. As nerve-wracking as an over-excited kid can be, I can never ever ever imagine doing this. My boy’s birthday is tomorrow and one of my gifts to him is something that he’s been asking for for 6 months. It’s been agony for me to wait to give it to him and the only thing that has made it possible for me to be patient is imagining the look on his face when he opens it.
As difficult and wrenching as the stories about death on holidays are, it’s the images of parents deliberately being cruel to their children that has pushed this over the edge for me.
A pretty tame one here:
Thanksgiving 1990. I’m an undergrad in Greensboro and my folks up in DC decided to have a big thanksgiving family reunion up in the NC Mountains. It was a fine time for most everyone. Except for those of us who unknowingly have Mononucleosis. And who have just additionally contracted strep throat from a relative. I spent that holiday weekend asleep and the next week back at school in the infirmary.
A funnier story to liven it up:
When I was little my always family went to our aunt and uncles for thanksgiving. One year when I was around 4-5, my uncle was in a leg cast all the way up to his waist with his big toe sticking out of the end. He was a soldier straight out of the R Lee Ermey mold and would give me a hard time all the time. Well, by the time the evening was coming to a close, I was tired and cranky. He wouldn’t let up, though. With his leg up on a chair and a stack of phone books, his big toe was right at my mouth level. So I bit down on it and clamped down. Not really trying to break the skin or anything, but hard enough to hurt. And so the rest of my family looked over at the big tough sergeant yelling, “get’em off! get’em off!” while trying to swat my head with the big wooden spoon that he used to scratch under the cast. But the waist-high cast wouldn’t let him reach. The comments from the rest of the family were along the lines of, “Well you shouldn’t have been such a shit, Howard” or just plain laughter. They finally came over and got me. After a suitable while.
OMG, Max Torque! I’m in tears here! What a wonderful, beautiful ending to that story!
Hypno-Toad, your 4- or 5-year-old self is my new hero.
Not exactly a Thanksgiving story (what IS it about that holiday?) but close: the last year that I lived in {city where I went to college} instead of {city where my parents live} I had come home for the T-Day weekend as I always dutifully did. The Sunday after, my mother and I are heading to church. During the car ride, my mother went into hysterics over - there’s no nice way to say this - the complete steaming pile of shit she’s singehandedly made of her own life.
She’s made melodramatic suicidal gestures before (helpful hint to parents: never try to get your 7-year-old to do something mundane by threatening to kill yourself violently if she doesn’t) but this was at 85 mph in a highway construction zone. If she’d succeeded, she’d have taken me with her.
That was the last time I ever got in a car with her.
The following Christmas was the last time I ever slept at their house IIRC - because I had to. The next summer, The Other Shoe and I moved back to {city where my parents live - we both grew up here too} and I was in a panic about being so much closer to them until he very helpfully pointed out that it meant I’d never have to sleep at their house again.
I still haven’t decided how - or if - I’ll tell her I’m getting married tomorrow. She’ll go all hysterical no matter what, so it’s not like there’s a right answer anyway.
I’ll never forget that Sunday-after-Thanksgiving morning in the car with her, though, not till my mind rots away completely.
Just so you know, this is totally weak in comparison to what you guys have been through.
My worst holiday was New Year’s Eve, 1992. I had recently moved home to Grandma’s house to give birth to my daughter. I was estranged from the father, and from anyone I had ever considered a friend, plus I had this crying two-month old enigma on my hands. I stayed up until midnight because that’s what you do on New Year’s, and as the clock struck midnight, I was overcome with despair and I just cried and cried. I was twenty-one and sure I’d ruined my whole life.
Well, as it turned out, my life wasn’t so ruined after all, but I did have a fine case of post-partum depression, plus the regular kind.
That seems so unfair to me. It amazes me when parents forget what little goofballs we children could be and don’t ask when a kid is upset, because sometimes a kid has a legitimate reason to cry that is totally not what the parent thinks.
My goddaughter’s parents always ask her why she’s upset before making any kind of decision about what to do about it. They never assume. She started to cry once when she was given white grape juice. It took awhile to figure out what was wrong. She started to cry and we went 
She thought it was apple juice because that’s what it looked like, but it didn’t taste like apple juice at all!
Turns out, at school they’d been doing some health and safety stuff about “dangerous stuff” around the home. You know, a “Don’t drink the Windex” kind of lesson. When I was a kid, they would have sent us home with Mr. Yuck stickers. Anyway, long story short, the grape juice taste of her “apple juice” made her think she’d taken a swig of poison. Yes, it was a huge leap, but her cognitive abilities are a bit wonky so she can really latch on to a literal idea, and had come home thinking death by poison was lurking in every cupboard. Grape juice was supposed to be purple, and apple juice is yellow, so no matter what, what she drank was wrong and she had swallowed poison for sure!
This. My son is 6 and yes he drives me totally batty sometimes but the thought of taking Christmas away from him just makes my heart hurt. Hubby and I get just as excited watching him open the things his heart has dreamed of as he is to get them, and to hear him wax on for weeeeks about how Santa has seen what a good boy he is makes me realize I don’t ever get this innocent, beautiful time with him back, ever.
You’ve reminded me of my 12th birthday, when my shrewish mother was in an especially bad mood that day – I mean even worse than any other day – and kept threatening to take back all of my presents. My father finally put his foot down and told her to shut up, that that was not going to happen.
Boy, there sure is a lot of dust in this office! 
What a charming grin!
Our worst holiday is probably Thanksgiving. I mean, our family all gets along great, but we tend to have mishaps. One Thanksgiving the oven failed, so the wife hauled the turkey over to Mom’s while I poked around in the innards of the oven. And another my wife sliced her thumb open while carving something, so we spent the afternoon in the emergency room. And then there was the power failure (which was actually kind of fun; we sat around and played cards by candlelight).
Christmas a few years ago. The family was getting together on Christmas Eve at my sister’s house for dinner and exchange of gifts.
Althought we were really strapped for money, we made sure everyone got nice gifts. When it came time for opening the gifts, I got about three gifts altogether…
from the local gas station.
I never attended another family get-together since then.