warksgirl

With Christmas in the not too distant future, I thought it would be fun to share stories your favourite Christmas story (or disaster).

I'm sure we all have one, whether it's the year granny drank too much port or the year the chimney caught fire.


Many years ago, the first year in our first house together in England, we had my whole family over on Christmas Day. There was a lot of bickering leading up to Christmas (usual family rows-won't bore you with details) and my brother and sister in law nearly didn't come...

Anyway, we were getting the dinner ready. The turkey was on the kitchen table while were were making gravy, roast potatoes, etc.; all the last minute rushing. When we finally gave our attention to the turkey to carve it, to our horror, our cat had devoured a sizable chunk of the nice, juicy breast! So, my husband just carved it up anyway and gave it my SIL. "nothing a little gravy won't sort out!"

What you don't know won't hurt you, I suppose.

MightBe

Your too early. Thanksgiving comes first.

Ash UK/US

Your keen...first the christmas cracker thread now this

worst Christmas I ever remember was the year we cancelled christmas day because we all had flu.

another year the cooker totally gave up on christmas eve... however I should add we did have a full christmas dinner... a friend cooked our turkey the rest we did in 2 streamers and the microwave.

Ash

sibsie

Moat House Hotel in Shepperton. It seemed like such a good idea at the time. My mother was fed up with cooking Christmas lunch for everyone, so we decided to go en masse to this hotel for a fab day with no cooking, cleaning or hassle.

It was about £80 a head and that was 10 years ago so cheap it wasn't. Well we turned up and had to wait 2 hours for lunch to be served. That would have been ok had we been plyed with drinks but the service was totally crap.

We finally get called in to eat and the food was dreadful. The room was really dark so we didn't realise we were eating raw turkey which would subsequently give us salmonella. If you've never had it I highly recommend it for weight loss.

Father Christmas comes in to save the day. Slight snag. Whilst we were being starved of booze, Father Christmas wasn't. He was plastered. He staggered up to the stage area to give out pressies to the kids. Working from a list he barks their names out and using that oh so personal touch, shouts out just their last names. My poor little nieces were terrified. We took them up to him and he literally threw the gifts at them. By this time my salmonella was starting to kick in and I rushed home where I spent the next four days in the bathroom.

James Box

It is not yet time for Christmas spirit, so I feel the need to point out...
You're

Yosser

Its never to early in the U.S to start christmas stories
The xmas trees (artifical) are out on display at Target, Home Depot etc.

There are xmas songs on the radio here in Dallas, all this ands it still only Nov 12th......I got a feeling its going to drag on a bit this year.

CalgaryAMC

I made my first Christmas purchase yesterday evening. I had nipped over to K-Mart for some Corona, and low and behold there was this incredible animatronic light-up deer for the lawn. I purchased it immediately and have now constructed it in my living room. It's head moves up. And then down. And then up. And down.

Yosser

My neighbor has a set of 3 nodding deers! get thanks giving out of the way and its "on" for most excessive xmas light display we could possibly come up with

I just hope my back don't go out again, I was stuck on the roof for nearly half an hour last year, stiff as a board I was!

CalgaryAMC

I have been outdone. I will have to go back and buy three more, and the 8-foot inflateable (and illuminated) Santa's train.

ElsieTheMaid

I do remember one year on xmas day, watching my mum chase my dad around the couch with a butcher's knife. Grandma was sitting on the said couch, but kept smoking her fag and didn't take her eyes off the telly.


Quite comical looking back at it now!

Englishmum

OMG....I had food poisoning one Christmastime too., about a dozen years ago...

My husband's brother and his family had recently bought a huge 8 bedroomed house in Lampeter, West Wales. They invited our family, my husband's twin brother and his family, M-i-L, and another brother and his family (all of us lived in various parts of the South East) and we all arrived on Boxing Day. We weren't that keen on going in the first place, the b-i-l and his wife are a bit weird....she lived in a tent at Greenham Common for 7 years (where the USAF cruise missiles were based) and he is like a 'mad professor' - he got a First at Cambridge Uni. They were also practising 'Green' witches.....

Although the house was huge, unfortunately they didn't seem to bother heating it....the bedrooms were freezing...yet their kids were running around in barefeet on floors without carpets. The bed we were in was damp and we had a terrible night's sleep. The following day for lunch, Allan produced the largest turkey I'd ever seen. He'd been to an auction and bid 1 pound for the turkey....the silly bugger thought he was getting the entire bird for 1 pound, but it was actually 1 pound per pound in weight. This turkey weighed 40 pounds....

Somehow he managed to get it into the oven (I think he had to remove the legs) and cooked it all night long. He carved it up, but because it had been cooking for so long it had dried out. I could barely eat it.

Naturally the turkey meat was produced again for the evening meal. I couldn't bear the thought of it and discovered that there was a local Indian takeaway open in the town, so off I went and purchased the "House Special" . Within hours I wasn't feeling very well. I was trying to sleep in that damp bed and intermittently trot to the loo to throw-up or to sit on the bog for ages.

By the morning I felt a little bit better, but decided not to join the rest of the family on a trip to a pantomime which my kids were really looking forward to . Just as well as I would have missed most of it by being in the ladies for the entire performance! I was beginning to wonder if my sister-in-law whom I didn't get on too well with had put a spell on me LOL! :scared:

I really couldn't face another night in that damp bed and we just packed our bags and raced along the M4 to get home to our cosy warm house and beds in Essex.....

.

Lord Lionheart

I think one of the most memorable for me was about 10 years ago. The girlfriend and I decided to do Christmas dinner for all our ex-pat friends. We had about 12 - 18 coming on Christmas Day and bought a large Turkey ( 20 lbs or so), we stuffed and cooked it on Christmas Eve and it took about 8 hours to cook in the oven after a lot of stuffing mixing and preperation. Finally it was done, after a full day of preperation we decided to go to our local English pub and leave the large Turkey on the kitchen table to cool........................ we returned from the pub at about 2:30 AM on Christmas Day after a skin-full, upon walking into our apartment we saw a large, thick, black trail of ants from the kitchen going up the table leg and swarming all over the turkey. The girlfreind and I sat there plastered in the early hours of Christmas morn. picking the dead ants from the turkey and drowned ones from the surrounding juices in the aluminum pan.
We served it up later in the afternoon to our guests and ourselves, no-one was any the wiser. I hasten to add that we did heat it up prior to serving and felt it was better to keep this to ourselves considering the size of the bird and the prep. time involved....... washed down with lashings of red wine to kill any 'bugs'.

ladyofthelake

Our neighbours have had their Xmas tree up for a week already!

Tone

Black eye, stiched up nose and a concussion, lovely Xmas day that was

joto

And what was the cause of this. Tell us more Tone (if you can remember). LOL.