Share your lamest, most disappointing holiday memories

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
121

At least your sisters liked cake. Mine didn’t. But thankfully mom was never so cruel as to make me have birthday pie.

My ex invited his parents to stay with us, in our one bedroom apartment, for three weeks over Christmas and New Years (our first Christmas together). I had to clean and cook for them, since I wasn’t working, and his insane mother wanted to be entertained. She also wouldn’t let me talk and was relentlessly critical about anything. I had a miserable, terrible, very bad holiday. My ex wouldn’t change the situation even though I begged. Note the ‘ex’ bit.

That was the worst one…even the Christmas by myself was far better than that.

122

For me, most holidays are wonderful, although some are just meh.

Except for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and my birthday 2008-9.

I had lost my SO of eight years to a heart attack on March of 2008. I knew that the holiday season would be a difficult one, so I planned to do things that wouldn’t be a constant reminder of him.

I went on a trip to Martha’s Vinyard with a friend over Thanksgiving. Over the course of the weekend, I began to run a low grade fever and bagan to develop a skin abcess. By the time that I got home to Tennessee, I was pretty sick. My doctor was still out for the holidays, so I went to a doc-in-the-box locally. They told me that I had a staph infection, gave me a scrip for antibiotics and sent me on my merry way.

The second Friday after Thanksgiving, I cancelled the holiday party that I always host for the Christmas parade. Instead, I drove myself to the ER. Two surgeries, eleven days and a diagnosis of MRSA later, I was released on Christmas Eve to a rehab center, where I stayed until NYE. I slept through my birthday a few days later.

Even with friends and family coming to visit me in the hospital and rehab center, I don’t think that I’ve ever felt more alone at the holidays than that year.

123

Me, too. Your Dad sounds like he was awesome.

124

Some of you folks should try what my family has been doing for a few years: Fakesgiving. We’re getting together for the holiday this week instead of next week. My flight up to mys sister’s place and back will be way easier than a Thanksgiving flight, the grocery stores aren’t so bad, and some of my sisters friends will be able to have dinner with us. And afterwards, I still get to have the actual Thanksgiving weekend at home with my own friends.

Once you try it, you’ll never have it the old way again.

125

For the most part I’ve had pretty good holidays. Even on some Thanksgivings I couldn’t have been home I was surrounded by good people, plus I emotionally lowered the importance of holidays.

But one disappointment will haunt me until the day I die:

It was my second and last trip to Iraq. There were only a handful of airmen in our group, so we were all decently close. Even at home we all hung-out with one another. But due to mission constraints usually some were on a day shift while the rest were on nights, and we were hardly together because we each had our own responsibilities.

Except on Christmas. Unless something came up our entire squadron would be together that day and I’d be able to get a picture with all of my friends. I really wanted that picture.

So of course, Christmas day came and after my crew spent all day cooking the food right before everyone would have gotten together we got called on alert and didn’t finish until after everyone ate and they all dispersed to their various jobs.

No picture. Now, of course, everyone I deployed with are in different places. Some, like myself, have separated from the military and we are all over the country, others are at different squadrons, etc. And my best friend, who I had the pleasure of flying with, was killed a little more than five months ago in Afghanistan. So yeah, although I see it in my head there will never be another opportunity for me to get that damn picture.

126

Watching my then 9 year old neice open THIRTY THREE presents from her parents, her grandparents, one aunt and (one present from) me.

And getting ONE (total) present from all those people.

That present? A hand made quilt/blanket rack from my father, in which I had absolutely NO interest in and really didn’t want. (Hell, 13 years later it is disassembled and sitting on the top of one of my bookshelves.)

Yeah, it hurt his feelings that I was obviously not interested in it, and I apologized a couple of years later. But it was really the combination of that gift with the sickening pile of way too many gifts my neice got that had me upset. Not just that year but the years leading up to it.

127

It’s a pretty close tie between Christmas 2005 and my birthday 2009.

During Christmas 2005, I had a nasty jaw surgery that had many unforeseen complications–leaving me completely wired shut, unable to eat, and out of my mind most of the time on painkillers.

But the worst part was coming back to my parents’ house the day before Christmas to find out that my next-door neighbor, the father of my best friend (and second father to me) had died in a freak accident.

It was a horrible Christmas. I couldn’t be happy.
And, right before my birthday in March 2009, my now-ex husband left me for a woman he met on World of Warcraft. Good times. (Things are better now; he and I actually communicate amicably every now and then.)

128

Maybe yes, maybe not. I was of little use as a witness since I never saw the guy. But I talked with the detective who took my report a little later on. It seems this guy was on a ‘rampage’ using this mugging technique, the police had quite a few of them - or he told other perps how it worked and they tried it out. In any case, someone tried the same thing on an elderly man on what he must have thought was an empty street, but apparently a taxi cab full of Navy guys came around the corner while he was in mid-attack (the Philly Navy base being still open at the time). They had the cabbie stop and piled out and chased the guy down and were not gentle.

But there was no way of knowing if the guy they beat was the one who slammed me or an imitator.

129

My father-in-law died from cancer in June of '75. My mother-in-law went into a nursing home;
my dear ex didn’t visit her much (he was quite self centered); however I assumed we’d have her for Christmas (ex and I had discussed this but he never bothered to enlighten his mother). Since no-one else knew we were expecting her, her niece and family had Grandma over for Christmas. We invited her for St Stephen’s Day instead.

While I was in the kitchen, our five year old daughter came to tell me that Grandma wasn’t answering her. Sure enough, Grandma had had a stroke, and died in hospital the following day.

A few years later, I was a single parent. Christmas was always as big an event as I could manage for the kids (no other family left), though we didn’t have much money.
The tradition was that things started when the kids woke up and looted their stockings, then we’d have breakfast, then open the gifts under the tree. There wasn’t anything much for me - they were young, etc - but my pleasure came when I watched them open their gifts.

When they were about 8 and 10, I came down at 8am to find out Christmas was over. They hadn’t bothered to wake me that year, just checked out all their loot and turned on the TV. They both still remember me bursting into tears and going back to my room, closing the door. When I could compose myself I came back and tried to be cordial but things just weren’t the same.

130

My mom would have skinned my sister and me alive. You should have laid into them (verbally). I certainly hope you made it clear that they were never allowed to do that again.

131

That’s horrible! I couldn’t imagining doing that when we were younger. We just dragged our parents out of the bed.

What’d you do the next year? If it were me I would have canceled Christmas, but I’m vindictive.

132

When I was 11, I had the luck of having chicken pox over Thanksgiving. My parents were kind enough to stay home with me rather than going to my Aunt and Uncle’s house. However, as my Dad had not had the chicken pox, I was not allowed to be around the family. My Mom put my dinner on a tray, knocked on my bedroom door, then when I was done I was to leave the tray just outside my door and she picked it up. I spent the day watching TV and reading. The worst part of it all? In our neighbohood there were a dozen kids my age. All but me and one other kid had the chicken pox a few months prior. The other kid that didn’t initially get sick did so when I did. He was the one super weird neighborhood kid that no one wanted to associate with. I spent the next few months being teased for supposedly being his girlfriend (a fate worse than death when you’re 11 and your supposed boyfriend liked picking his nose and… erm… feasting).

I spent TheKid’s first Christmas Eve with her in the ER. She was a few weeks old, cried miserably all day. Nothing I did helped. I didn’t want to call my Mom as she wasn’t happy with the whole giving birth out of wedlock thing. Emo, TheKid’s dad, had to work all day. By the time he came home, I was a wreck, sitting in the kitchen with the lights out, crying, feeling like the most horrible mother ever. We went to the ER, which was pretty busy. We were admitted to a room, but were asked to go back to the waiting room as serious emergency was coming in. An elderly woman I knew from my childhood was fatally shot by a burglar. A few hours later we were finally seen by a doctor who said TheKid had colic, deal with it, and he left.

By then it was 3am. Went home, continued to attempt to deal with TheKid. Around 9am, no appreciable sleep, we went to my parents’ house to “celebrate” Christmas Day. When I told my Mom about the previous evening, she laughed. Not about the murder, of course, but because I didn’t know what colic was and boy was I silly for wasting an ER trip for it.

133

I’ve mentioned before that Middlebro has gone back to celebrating his birthday because his son takes it for granted that when one has a birthday, one celebrates it. I understand that the first time that conversation happened, the Proud Parents tried to explain that “Mommy celebrates her birthday, Daddy doesn’t” and the Kidlet’s reaction was halfway between “pull the other one, it’s got bells on” and “don’t be daft, why would one get a party but not the other?”

The 3-or-4yo at the time daughter of a friend took a look at the piles of Christmas presents… told her mother to “wait” to start opening them… organized them (she wasn’t very good at counting yet, but she was able to line them up so she could see which line had more items in it)… and declared “this is not right! I have more presents and Daddy has less!” and told Daddy he could choose one of hers, since evidently there had been a mistake. Her mother and grandmother’s attempt at telling her that her pile was bigger because so were individual items was met with a clear and irrefutable demonstration of how she might not be able to count to seven, but she bloody well knew the difference between “five” and “seven”. They’ve made sure to have the exact same count for each member of the family, since that happened.
Kids are very big on fairness, pity that gets lost somewhen in the process of growing up…

134

I think I may be missing some nuance here. Were you also a child at the time? Or did all of the other adults also get lots of presents? Because I wouldn’t think it unusual at all for a child at a Christmas gathering to get lots of presents while the adults got little/none.

135

In our family, my parent’s generation had a (mutual) agreement to only give purely symbolic presents to each other; as we grew up, we all bought into it - so each adult gives every other adult some minor gift (a paperback, or a CD - that sort of thing).

The kids get the presents.

Keeps holiday spending under control.

136

I was a bit confused too, particularly since I think a handmade gift from my dad would be about the best thing in the world - I have a small wooden mouse that he carved for me that’s one of my prized possessions - a wooden quilt stand and I would be over the moon although I’m a girl and I do like quilts.

Is there another part of the story that was missed in the telling?

To the posters who’s parents did horrid crap to them when they were little (giving away presents, refusing to make cake that you enjoy, etc) - do you even speak to these people now? Was the incident ever discussed? I mean, I have a couple of small things from my childhood that still burn my butt a little and I’ve tried to discuss them with my mother who claims they never happened (:rolleyes:) but nothing at all on the scale of some of these things.

As for my worst holiday - I don’t think I have a good story to share - I’ve spent quite a few Christmases single and alone, but I’ve always managed to find someone to feed me, and my mom always sends an obscene amount of gifts out of guilt (totally not necessary, BTW, but still nice I guess).

137

I hate going to my mom’s house for Christmas. We always get snowed in, and then it turns into The Shining. My youngest sister once lunged over the counter, clearly trying to rip my mom’s throat out with her teeth, and we had to literally lock her in the laundry room and mom in the bedroom until me and my other sister could get it sorted. My mom had it coming, though. Anyway, that’s not my story. That’s just the reason why I decided last year that we were going to be doing things different. First, instead of all of us driving 45 miles to Mom’s, she could drive to SLC to see us. Second, we would open presents at my place, and then we’d go out to dinner at a nice restaurant instead of having the stress of cooking. Third, I would get my mom a really nice hotel room here in the city–on that allowed her dog of course–because she loves staying in hotel rooms. I imagined that we’d wake up, have breakfast while we waited for mom, then open presents, go to the movies, check mom into her hotel, have some eggnog and hot cider, go to the restaurant, and then call it a day. It sounds lovely, doesn’t it?

Well, mom didn’t show up in the morning. I called her at 12:30 and she hadn’t even left the house yet because she “didn’t know when she should be there.” Of course she knew, but she was punishing us for planning our own Christmas and inviting her along, instead of just doing what she wanted. We haven’t even touched our presents yet, even though we’d all been up for like four hours and I should be able to open my own fucking presents when i want. She finally lets us know around 1 that she’s left. So we wait for her and finally open the presents.

Except, mom is pissed. And I could tell because she was being the most obnoxiously passive-aggressive bitch on the planet. That, and she starts crying before we even open the presents. Did we wrong her in some way? Did we forget to buy her presents? Did we open presents without her? Nope. She just didn’t like driving to our house on Christmas morning, and she could not get over the slight. Also, she’s already smoked a shitload of weed.

So we open the presents, mom freaking out at random intervals, and then I get around to looking at the movie times and realize there’s nothing we can see. All of the times are just a little too early, or given that we have reservations, a little too late. Mom starts crying again when we tell her to go check in to her hotel room and we’ll be there in a bit. “I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO SPEND CHRISTMAS WITH MY GIRLS! WHY DO YOU LIE TO ME? WHY CAN’T WE BE TOGETHER AS A FAMILY?!?!?!?!? NOW YOU’RE JUST SENDING ME AWAY.”

All I said to her was “I’m not sure if we’ll be able to get to a movie today. Why don’t you go check into your room while we clean up here?”

So she screams and shouts about how she came to Salt Lake to spend time with us, and then finally left to check in. Of course, she loves the hotel, she loves the room, and for a short time, everything is fine. And then it’s time to go to dinner.

Now I didn’t choose an expensive restaurant at random and spring it on her. I chose the restaurant at her hotel, I explained to her how much it would cost, and that it was actually fine dining. She spent two weeks shouting at me every time we talked so I would order the “deep fried turkey” because some random person at work told her they loved that restaurant’s deep fried turkey. That restaurant does not have turkey, deep fried or otherwise. My point is, she knew full well where we were going to be eating and how much it cost. But that didn’t stop her from commenting on every item on the menu and bitching about how she couldn’t afford anything and forcing my sisters to negotiate their entire meal with her. It was mortifying. I mean, the waiter even gave us some appetizers on the house, and I’m pretty sure it’s because mom was saying so very, very loudly “I CAN’T AFFORD THESE PRICES! I CAN’T AFFORD TO EAT HERE! WE’LL HAVE TO SHARE FOOD!”

Oh, and also? She smuggled her dog into the restaurant.

Also, also? She was drinking heavily at that point. She ordered several drinks with dinner, she drank the complimentary alcoholic cider in the hotel’s lobby, and she brought her own big bottle of whiskey. Not to mention the pot. The dinner was good, but by the time we left, I literally wanted to die.

Oh, but it’s not done yet! Mom wants to spend time with us. Mom won’t give us a free second of peace and quiet. Mom is a crazy fucking bitch who is so drunk and so high that she’s impossible to contain, much less speak to like a normal person. She comes back to our apt with us (it’s about 2 miles from her hotel) and wants to play Beatles Rock Band. So we set her up with the drums, I take the guitar, one sister is on bass, the other sings. We love playing Rock Band. It’s our favorite thing to do together. Except Mom won’t shut up and play. She bags on the drums so hard that she literally fucks up the red pad. She cries actual tears if she fucks up. She throws fit after fit, shouting “I HATE THE FUCKING DRUMS” and “MY KIDS HATE ME I JUST WANTED TO SPEND TIME WITH THEM” in turns. No amount of placating will make her happy, and she becomes increasingly loud and violent until my husband has enough and calls her a cab. When the cab shows up, she and my sister (who is staying at the hotel with her) shuffle out…get all the way down to the cab…and then can’t find Mom’s phone or some shit. I’m not sure, all I know is that it’s a good 15 minutes before they leave the apartment building.

It was so horrible that my sister ran away to London this year and will not be back for Christmas, specifically b/c she can’t go through that again. I have no idea what we’re going to do, because I’m scared I may kill her.

138

Huh. And I thought my dad forgetting my 15th birthday was a bummer.

Though there was the Christmas when my stepmother screamed “GODDAMNED COCKSUCKER” at my dad while cleaning the Christmas dinner. But on the scale of wrong things that bitch did, it ranks somewhere between 3,000 and 3,250.

139

The can’t afford food is a great whine when she’s been token and swilling booze all day. It’s the classic phrase heard at certain charitable places around here. As for the presents, she should have had to whine because everyone opened them already and then went to the movies, before she even left the house. That shit don’t fly for us anymore, because certain family are always late, and now we do what we planned on time. Oh you’re currently 30 minutes late for the meal, because you’re not done eating at TGI Friday in a town 30 minutes from us. This is the kind of crap they pulled all the time.

140

Maybe I shouldn’t feel this way- or if I do, not let it be known… BUT. I’m so glad I’m not the only one with the crazy in the family, or had some sucky holiday happenings.

I hate that hurtful things happen to any of us, but I guess it’s true when they say misery loves company! Thanks, y’all :smiley: