My worst Christmas was walking out of a vets office with an empty cat carrier after Picatso lost a long fight with feline lekuma. I was maybe 10-11, and I remember when my mom and I got into the car just bawling our eyes out.

My parrot died christmas morning 3 years ago

Probably watching the New York Time Square countdown in new year of 2021

Literally just empty, like some post-apocalyptic movie

made me have a mini-existential crisis

Last year. We all got Covid when we were doing our shopping the week before and basically cancelled Xmas. Luckily we didn’t have lots of family or friends visiting but the three of us spent the whole time on various couches and beds either in a daze of fever or lethargy. I was the last to go down (and thankfully was the least hit) so managed to get the tree decorated and presents wrapped before the couch became my home. We managed to open presents on Boxing Day, for a hour, and then back to bed. The prime rib roast got chucked in the freezer, I honestly don’t remember what we ate during that time. It took the two weeks we had off to recover so the whole holiday was a bust.

This year we will be wearing masks EVERYWHERE we go next week.

One year the entire family got a stomach flu over the Christmas holidays. The kids were around 3-6 years old and didn’t know to puke in a bucket in the night; they just vomited all over the bedsheets each time. We nearly ran out of sheets and had to load the washing machine in the middle of the night to keep up, while taking breaks to puke and shit. My diarrhea was so bad that my blood pressure dropped while sitting on the toilet, so immediately after dropping a load I had to lie down on the floor to avoid passing out, only to pull myself up seconds later to puke in the (now diarrhea-filled) toilet bowl. Meanwhile I hear the kids crying and puking outside and my then wife being pissed that I’m not helping.

My grandfather would regularly mess up managing his diabetes nearly every Christmas we spent with him and end up in a diabetic rage. I honestly couldn’t recount any single one of his diabetic rages because they’ve all kind of congealed together in my head over time.

Three parts that stand out though:

• One of the rages was set off because he couldn’t find the pen he had been using to track his blood sugar levels (he liked to use one pen from new to dried out) so he had to use a new one.
• One of them, my father had to step between my grandfather and my mother and stare my grandfather down because my grandfather was fixing to beat my mother.
• One of them, someone in the family called the police on my grandfather because of his shit.

Those may have been all the same incident, but I remember the rages happening on more than one Christmas.

It’s hard to square that shit with all the good memories I had with him. I’ve learned over the years that he was a shit father before he had grandkids too. But he was (excepting the diabetic rages) a good grandfather to me and my cousins.

Life can be weird like that.

This one. So many uninvited guests… No one wants them here, but they have to complain about how I live for some reason. I’m not even sure there will be another one it’s so bad. I think we’ll end up blocking numbers and changing phones to avoid them, etc

When I’d contracted the flu… I’d forgotten to get my flu shot that year, hard lesson learned!!

I had a really bad panic attack and had to go to the hospital. I was stuck there for 8+ hours and it just sucked

I don’t really have strong memories of Christmas, I get the impression from my family that I tended to be less depressive at that time of year.

I’m predicting the upcoming Christmas is going to be, since it’s the first one I’m going to be in without access to a single loved one.

Worst one since I cut ties with my family was my worst-ever flare up of stress-induced GI issues that turned into intermittent vomiting episodes lasting from christmas eve until I went to the ER on new year’s day a few hours after midnight, ruined a little roadtrip my fiancee and I planned. Plus my work had just switched (worsened) our health insurance providers (effective at midnight jan 1) so getting that sorted out was a nightmare too.

Ones with my family idr, really. The norm was a mess of alcohol, gaslighting, and badly-veiled contempt for everyone (present, not present, unfortunate enough to be a stranger passing by, etc) usually with extremely disorienting travel involved. Even the cyclical vomiting is preferable.

2017 a few days before Christmas, dad kicked me out of the house :/

Probably the one where my dad died two days before Xmas. The upside was being last minute invited into my extended family’s celebrations. After spending two days in hospitals, in shock and mourning walking into a warm, cheery home with food and love will always be a cherished memory in what was otherwise the worst episode of my life.

My toddler had a respiratory issue several days before Christmas. Hospitalized for a few days. Released a few days before Christmas. We got home. Pipes froze that very day, for several days. So no water in the house. We were supposed to travel, but due to the hospital and weather were stuck home, so we had to scramble to get a few Xmas things together for the kids. Luckily midway through Xmas, the pipes finally thawed - Christmas miracle, we could shower.