Post your horrible holiday stories here

Mine just revolve around my father getting too drunk and crashing the car on the way home from my uncle's house. Only happened twice.

but TWICE!??!!

It is lucky we only crashed twice.

while preparing to pray and eat Christmas dinner. I was 21 and just out of college, my Dad blamed it on liberal proffessors!

Horrible sad story. I felt guilty as hell opening presents that year. My brother may have unwittingly started me on my path toward liberalism.

It's not pretty and it's why I hate Christmas. My mom died when I was 14. Three months later, my dad moved his new girlfriend in. That Christmas, I was informed that they were going to her parents place in another state for the holiday and I was "welcome to come along". Gee, thanks, dad.

So I chose to go to my older sister's place. She had a small son and I thought maybe I'd get a whiff of Christmas by watching him enjoy it. Christmas day was okay and that night, she and her hubby went out. They came home late with a friend, a guy in my BIL's band. Who raped me on the couch after they went upstairs to bed.

Three months later, I had a miscarriage. Never told anyone about any of it. I fucking hate Christmas.

Aren't you glad you asked? :)

that just makes me want to hug you and hug you and hug you.

You sweetie. I am SO damn sorry. Mean people SUCK.

God. I can TOTALLY see why someone wouldn't like Christmas in that case.

:hug: Old history now but it did put a damper on any Christmas spirit I ever felt.

but I am hoping you got some counseling at some point or another...

it's mostly a blur of overspiked eggnog (PAPAW! STOP! That's enough whiskey!) and the adults being too buzzed up to notice the kids pinching some.

There were also family members with candy canes stuck in every visible orifice and posing for pictures.

Great big huge fights that ALWAYS happened in the car between my hopped up on pills mother and my drunk stepfather because one of them didn't want to go over to their "fucking bastard-ass in-laws" for Christmas. It just wasn't Christmas without my mother insulting the shit out of my stepfather's sweet sweet mother. Then handing her a present and smiling a sickeningly sweet smile. Ug.

And there I was, dreamer that I am, staring out the back window, and smiling, looking at the beautiful lights on the houses, feeling the chill in the air, with "The Nutcracker" music running through my head.

I was a strange kid. I still love Christmas.

I started playing when I was 9, did band in Jr High and High School. Then, for more punishment, decided to join the Army Band, and did that for 13 years. It was a fun job, actually.

But every year you have to have a Christmas concert, and Christmas parades, and Christmas music thrown in to ordinary jobs around that time of year. And you start practicing the music for these concerts as early as September. So every year since I was 10, Ive been playing F***ing Christmas music for four months out of the year.

If I hear "Sleigh Ride", I cringe. I avoid malls this time of year, because I can't take the noise from the speakers. I turn the lights off when carolers come to the door.

"A Charlie Brown Christmas" soundtrack around the clock of weeks. The a-hole LOVES Christmas. So, I have his CD in my desk now.

If he buys a new one, I'll have two.

Vince Guaraldi was a darn good musician.

But not for weeks at a time.

You know how the arrow was shot into the tree and it vibrated back and forth with that "arrow noise"?

Well ...one Christmas dinner involved a very large knife being flung at the table, landing right in front of me...swaying back and forth like that arrow as the tip of it was stuck into the table.. ( I was about 9)

No one ate dinner that day:(

and it crashing to the ground, breaking everything in its path.

Must be a dad thing. He also got flaming drunk one year on his birthday, was late getting home and threw his cake at my mother who ducked. The cake went sailing out the kitchen door and landed in a snowbank. Us kids were all bummed out.

And not in a funny way either.

Or, alternatively, being blind-drunk at a party and wandering into a darkened bedroom to find my boyfriend screwing another woman on top of the coat pile...

Please don't let that be my coat on top!

:puke:

A little over ten yrs ago, when I was still at home, my cousin and her husband came up from Georgia (I believe they were in Georgia at the time--they moved around a bit) to have Thanksgiving with us. Sometime around midnight, my cousin gets me alone and asks me if I had accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior. Now, I'd been going to a Catholic college and had been a life-long militant agnostic (militant agnostic?--"I said, I *don't *know*, dammit!") so I kind of wasn't sure how to answer the question--but I hate being witnessed to just before bed, because it can get pretty time-consuming so I said, "Sure. I even go to Mass." Which wasn't completely a lie, because I was in the choir, so I did go to Mass to perform.

This thrilled her no end. I got to go to bed, but I had to "talk Jesus" while she was around. Uncomfortable.

They had three sons, the two oldest were being homeschooled and the youngest was being breastfed. I discover the my surprise they were learning creation science after being *corrected* by an eleven year old about some point of evolution. As to the breastfed one, we discovered after the child was *very* fussy, (hollering) that the poor little bugger hadn't pooped in a couple days. The result being that my dad and my cousin's husband had to go out in the snow on Thanksgiving day to find suppositories for the baby.

My mom got the "holiday blues" at some point after administering the suppository to the kid, so dinner got off a little late. I ended up getting the table more or less together with my cousin's help, and the food was about room temperature...not too bad. But to make up for it, the next night mom kind of guilt-tripped and just kept making snacks. At the time, I had a boyfriend who was ten years older than me, and tatooed and had this beater of a car--the rebellion thing, you know? So I invited him over to meet the relatives for fun. Me and my cousin got -faced on Elmo Pio and there was an uncomfortable silence when in the conversation it was revealed I was more of a pro-choice liberal heathen than a Bible-believing baby Christian.

The relatives stayed five days, I think they pretty much all showered about twice while they were there. That was five extra people in a three bedroom house. Draw your own conclusions how cool that was.

I have a college friend whose family have Hollywood connections (on the production side, no one you've probably heard of). My parents had won a cruise, and I didn't want to go to my grandparents for the holiday since fall term didn't end for another couple of weeks, so my friend invited me to have Thanksgiving at her parents vaction home in Sun Valley, ID. The guest of honor was Charlton Heston. The drinking started early. The "fuck yous" started right on time.

He's such a tool.

He talked about himself the whole time he was there. These were the wilderness years for Heston (early 90's) and he'd been reduced to some shitty TV movie that my friend's dad had something to do with (I was quite blitzed by the time we sat down). There was a lot of unresolved hostility in that room, especially between my friend's parents, who divorced soon after. What I remember best was that after Heston left, my friend's grandpa remarked that he still thought he was Moses after all those years.

Most excellent story.

of the street.

He decided one year to get an artificial tree and everyone went flipping berserk when he walked in with it. Tears, hysteria, wailing, choruses of 'we want a REALLLLLLLLL tree", he got so pissed off and fed up with the cacophony of whining, he picked it up from the living room floor, dragged it through to the front door, kicked it open, walked down the street and tossed it into the middle of the street, with that time honored "dad" thing of "There! You happy now??'

should get together and go bowling.

:toast:

a tree, and then left it on the porch..still bound up.. Tossed it Jan 1..still wrapped up..:(

I cannot EVER remember a truly joyous holiday.. I go through the motions, and when the boys were little, they always enjoyed them because I forced myself to "do it all" for them..

Now that they are grown, we don't even put up a tree..

When we were first married, I went all out, but my husband did not seem to care one way or the other, so at the first opportunity, I just stopped doing it...

I buy presents for my kids (money now) and my best friend, but that's it.. My husband has never gone out of his way to surprise me, so I quit that too..

(In his defense.. he was raised as an only child born when his mother was 45 and his dad 60...apparently they were never very good at teaching him ..and I just gave up after 10 years or so,...He buys what he wants, and so do I..)

Started in my family, gave it to my in-laws, friends and neighbors and spent Christmas Day puking my guts out. Every hour someone new had it. That shit spreads like wildfire.

I was sicker than I'd been in years. I was all ready to sing at my church's Christmas Eve service and fly to Minneapolis the next morning.

However, on the evening of 12/23, I started feeling feverish, and within two hours, I was completely crawl-into-bed-and-hope-for-death sick: 103 degree fever, muscle aches, headache, respiratory symptoms

I hoped that I would feel better in the morning, but nothing had changed. Fortunately I had a phone by the bed to call my relatives in Minneapolis, the church choir director, and the airline. Otherwise, I just lay in bed with the radio on, drifting in and out of consciousness all Christmas Eve day and night.

On Christmas morning, I was coughing so hard that I was afraid I had pneumonia. I had an arrangement with another single woman in my building that we would call upon each other in emergencies, so I called and asked her to take me to the Kaiser urgent care clinic.

There I learned that I did not have pneumonia, just a really, really bad respiratory infection.

By evening, my fever had broken and I was able to get up a little bit and make myself some "sick food."

By the 27th, I felt well enough to travel, so I went to Minneapolis for a belated Christmas celebration. However, the cough hung on for the whole visit, especially since my elders keep their house hot and dry.

thank goodness. It was easter and my parents had given my sister and me (I was three at the time she was four) little stuffed bunnies. Mine was pink, hers was blue. This bothered her greatly, she really wanted the pink one. anyway after the big meal i was sent for a nap-
why my sister wasn't made to take a nap too, i do not know.
somehow somewhere she got her hands on a pack of matches.
she waited till i was sleeping, lit my pink stuffed bunny on fire and threw it into to bed with me (at the bottom of the bed not on me). I didn't wake up. Thankfully someone came to check on me and discovered the small fire in the bed.

my older sister used to start a fight (big argument) with someone every Christmas day. For that reason, I told my parents I wouldn't come home for Christmas if she was going to be there unless she promised not to argue. My ostracism of her worked and she learned to behave herself, but not until she was 40 years old.

So I guess I will be spending Thanskgiving with my family--over a funeral. Sigh.

I'm very sorry for your loss. :hug:

My parents got into a screaming argument over a present my father got my Mom. It was a mattress pad and the minute my Mom opened it she got horribly upset and claimed my father didn't love her and so on. It got so loud the neighbors called the cops. The worst part about this was that both of my parents were sober. I was 14 at the time and remember being so embarrassed.

sitting down to dinner at a large multi-family party, about 20 people at the table. home owners older daughter straggling finally comes down, sits between me and her father. As the second course is being served she casually, with out interrupting her conversation produces a razor blade and slices both fore arms length wise, blood every where. fortunately a couple of the people at the tables were EMT paramedics so she didn't die. it was the onset of her sever mental illness. it also ended a longstanding tradition of multi family thanksgiving dinners.

oh here's another one, my little brother was schizophrenic and suidical. about 6 years ago at thanksgiving he started one of his worst psychotic episodes. it lasted for nearly a month. one day before his 33'rd birth day, 12/20, he died. that was a great Christmas.

I think of these on holidays when my right wing, semi-fundi father-in-law starts pontificating.

and no, I don't particularly hate the holidays things happen sometimes truly awful things.

:cry: