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Holiday Catastrophes?

scrapsandsass

scrapsandsass

Oh Ricky you're so fine ...
Joined
Feb 11, 2011
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My husband always loves to tell the story about how he was at a holiday dinner with friends. The friend's wife has pulled the turkey out of the oven, and it is the picture of perfection. She has it on the platter and is carrying it to the table where everyone is seated. But she trips, and the turkey goes sliding off the platter, onto the floor, in front of all of the guests. She simply turned around, and went into her bedroom, locking herself in and crying.

Last year, we got to share the story of how Tim broke his ankle three days before Christmas and screwed up all of the last minute holiday plans :giggle

And now, he has graced me with another story.

Saturday, my daughter and I leave Kennedy with Tim and went shopping for a couple of items. We were gone about an hour and a half, only to return and find that the Christmas tree is pretty much bare. The lights are all cockeyed and hanging off of one section of the tree. The garlands are down at the bottom of the tree, or hanging wildly in the same section as the clump of lights. Apparently, my dear husband decided to reach alongside of the tree to grab a cookbook from the shelf. He's not the most graceful creature, so somehow, he knocked THE ENTIRE TREE over. Yes. All of the ornaments fell off. Several broke. The light string is not working on a long section. The tree survived, but was barely in the stand, tilting at a weird angle.

I knew better than to say much.

But when Tim left the room, I asked Kennedy if Bumpa had released a whole lot of bad words. Kennedy confirmed that Tim had cussed up a storm. And then Kennedy said, "And then Bumpa was quiet for a minute. But then he yelled, 'Thanks, Christmas!' and slammed the door when he went outside."

So of course we laughed ourselves sick. :giggle :giggle :giggle

Do you have any crazy holiday stories???
 
Only the year I spent Christmas Day in the ER getting stitches while the rest of the family was enjoying their dinner.
 
We went to a friends house for Christmas Eve dinner. Most of dinner was ready, she was finishing the turkey. The table was set all beautiful, and we were ready to eat.

And then, the oven element caught on fire!!! There was a pop, and then we saw the flames inside. We thought it was the turkey, but nope! It was the oven itself. Luckily, we were just visiting, and after dinner went home. Unluckily, they didn't have an oven or stove until December 26th.
 
The only story I think we have is the year of the stomach flu. It was Clara's first Christmas (she was just two months old), so we didn't travel and everyone came to us. Jeff was the first to go down mid-Christmas Eve church service. We proceeded to have a steady of progression of victims. My parents made it home before they got sick. I got it the day before the in-laws came and my BIL and his wife got it while they were still at our house. It was the gift that kept on giving. Yuck.
 
This year will be the argument over who hosts Christmas. My grandmother wants to have 18 adults and 6 kids in her tiny space, and apparently we are all against her and want nothing to do with her, if we go with my plan, which was hosting here at our house. If we do her way, my husband says I'm not allowed to plan anything. Which I feel makes me look ungrateful and argumentative to.my family. It's less than two weeks away, and we don't know if we're having a family meal, or where to gather. Ugh.
 
My most catastrophic Christmas event was arriving at my dad and step-mom's house a couple of years ago on Christmas Eve to find the entire house in a heightened state of tension. My step-sister and her mom had been fighting, my dad got into the middle of it, so they were all not speaking to one another, or if they did, it was very short and blunt. It was THE worst time I've ever had.

I can overlook cooking disasters, because there's always other food to be had. But when your family acts like the rear ends of horses, well then. There's not much you can do, other than leave. And I wish we would have left. LOL
 
Oh dear. I remember once when I was a little girl, my mom and aunt decided my grandmother needed a new tree and were going to surprise her with it. Apparently her's was dying and she was upset about it. So, they took it down and threw it out and THEN loaded up all of the cousins ON.CHRISTMAS.EVE. to get a new one.

This was the days before you could get an artificial one at every store and at this time, there were no trees left in town. Seriously, we went to every tree lot and they had nothing. (keep in mind this was over 35 years ago).

Anyway, I do have a memory of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree they ended up finding and putting up. It was way worse than the original (that was already dragged off). Surprise! :giggle

What a memory.
 
Oh goodness. There are some doosies in here! Gotta just laugh after the fact, right? Lol to the "thanks Christmas!" Ha ha ha! Poor guy.

A few years ago my hubby and I shipped our kids off to my parents house over night and then went off to a Christmas party with a bunch of friends. We knew we would be drinking so planned ahead to take a cab home that night and well... we had several cocktails each and had a really (hiccup) fun time. (blush). Anyway, we got home safely and went to bed. I woke up feeling less than stellar only to find our Christmas tree had crashed to the ground in the middle of the night. THAT was a huge mess to clean up and not even remotely what I wanted to be doing that morning. :giggle And then when our friend heard about the tree crashing down in the middle of the night, they started teasing us that we had gotten crazy and knocked down the tree (which didn't happen) and now they all to this day tease us about knocking over the Christmas tree. They tease my husband and say that the smell of Christmas tree makes him feel frisky. Oh dear. (am I sharing too much?) Lol!
 
I'm cracking up!! Thanks Christmas!!! I love it :rofl

I remember one Christmas in high school... My grandmother has always deemed herself to be crafty. Also, she's dirt poor, so she makes her crafts out of not-intended-for-crafting materials. This year, she had made my mom a table centerpiece... it was a Christmas tree made out of balls of aluminum foil. And then coated in wax or something? But it was hollow inside... the idea was to put a small candle on the inside, and then the light would illuminate the spaces between the aluminum foil balls. Yeah, well... My mom lit the candle under the tree in honor of her mother's efforts. And 10 minutes later, every smoke alarm in the house was going off, and you couldn't see through the haze in our dining room. Apparently whatever she had used to hold the aluminum balls together was NOT fireproof. LOL! We doused the fire, tossed the aluminum tree out in the snow, opened up every window (in the middle of a rather snowy and cold December) and left the house. It ended up to be quite nice because we took an impromptu tour of Christmas lights in the area. Never would have done that had we not nearly set the house on fire. So, I guess it wasn't a total failure.

We never told my grandma, by the way. No sense in crushing her creative spirit. :)
 
I needed to hear some of these stories! Thank you! (Ha ha pun intended!)

My family is pretty uneventful, and low key. Nothing crazy... if anything, just the older adults and cousins running around having Nerf gun fights all throughout the house. Other than that... crazy wrapping skills my family shows off - intentional ones! Fun but not too embarrassing!
 
When I was a kid, I couldn't stand the suspense of not knowing what I was getting for Christmas. My mother would put the gifts under the tree as they were wrapped, and I somehow learned how to peel back just enough tape to see what was inside, and then seal it back up, without, to the best of my knowledge, anyone being the wiser. The year I was 11 or 12, I was up to my usual snooping while Mom was out one day, and as I was putting things back under the tree, it fell over - right on top of me! I don't remember much about wiggling out from under it or getting it stood back up, I was too busy working on my "story". I ended up blaming our dog, Gypsy. She was a young German Shepherd, not quite a year old, so definitely big enough, and rambunctious enough, to have actually knocked it over. I have never before admitted this to anyone - hope I can trust you all with my secret!! :giggle
 
oh Shelli reminds me of the year...my Dad bought my mom a new vacuum and she would unwrap it everyday to clean up the pine needles.
That morning, she acted all surprised when she opened it and my Dad was so proud of getting it for her...he plugged it in to give it a go and it wouldn't pick up a thing...so Dad has to fix it..
He opened it up and what did he find?
PINE NEEDLEs
mom was busted...we giggled about that every year!
 
growing up in northern California, my brother lived in our garage. he loved it. My dad bought these big pieces of wood to make walls that would be able to be stored for my brother and section off his "room" in the garage as a Christmas present. ,he painted green like a ping pong table, and put hinges on it just like a ping pong table, and I helped him paint white lines on the edges with painter's tape, for exact measurements just like a ping pong table.
I said, "golly Dad, this looks just like a ping pong table"
he nodded and said, yeah, that gives Danny(my brother) a game feel for his room. oh good call Dad, I thought as I painted the white stripes along with my Dad.
I was so excited when my brother and I came out Christmas morning.
my brother was too..because he got a PING PONG table! It was for the whole family.
I said, in the older sister who knows more than anyone...
Nooooooooooooooooooooooo it is walls for your room.
Silence, then complete laughter, while my Dad explained it was a PING PONG table. Geez, I never liked that game much.lol
 
jk703 said:
Nothing crazy... if anything, just the older adults and cousins running around having Nerf gun fights all throughout the house.
Click to expand...

That reminds me! One of my favorite things about Christmas at my grandpa and grandma's house was that after all of the presents were opened, we'd have a huge paper wad fight with all of the wrapping paper. Everyone was afraid to hit grandma with a paper wad, but she sure wasn't afraid to hit us! It was so much fun!
 
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