Your Holiday Horror Stories

‘Tis the season to reminisce about all your most harrowing Christmases, Hanukkahs, Kwanazas, etc. past!

What’s the absolute worst holiday memory you can recall? Did you fall off the roof whilst decorating? Were you once so lonely you built an effigy of your mother out of blankets and pillows and had a tea party? There’s no shortage of how much the holidays can suck, and it’s only worthwhile if you tell the internet about how hilarious the horror once was…. so tell us. No one appreciates a traumatizing holiday story like your fellow Jezzies.

But before we get to that, last week was all about the most insulting holiday gifts you’ve been given. And you guys got shit.

Mycatdrives’s grandma seems fun:

The year I sent my grandma a thank you note and she sent it back with grammar and punctuation corrections in RED INK.

Ms. Nytusse If You’re Nasty’s mom gave her husband a baby… doll. You see where this is going:

This gift wasn’t given to me personally but it was still pretty awful from my perspective:

My mother gave my new husband a lifelike baby doll as a gift. She joked, “You can have this since you really want kids and I know she doesn’t.”

GingerOrGinged’s gift was not only insulting, it was vindictive as hell:

I had been a poor student for years, sleeping on an air mattress in a sleeping bag, when my mom asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I told her I wanted a duvet to replace my sleeping bag and a real suitcase to replace a weathered duffel bag. She implied she had some extra money that year and asked if I had a self-indulgent gift I wanted so I told her I would love a pair of gold stud earrings. Cue Christmas Day – my sister opened up a new duvet, my younger brother opened a new suitcase and my older brother got gold stud earrings. She gave me a fancy Belleek dish because I had noticed one once in an antique store. I got upset and she teasingly called me the green eyed monster from then on (I was so ungrateful for her thoughtful gift!).

Yay for moms with undiagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder! We’ve been no contact for ten years, best decision ever.

I pray LadyoftheDay’s sister got it together:

I was a fat kid in a family of tall skinny women (most of whom were models at one time or another). One year my sister gave me a pack of twinkies.

PhoebeCaulfieldTheThird was re-gifted, but maybe in a fine way:

My husband and I worked really hard to pick an appropriate gift for our very close, very stylish friends. They lived in a huge, meticulously decorated home and had very particular tastes. We settled on a lovely, not inexpensive artisan fruit bowl. We were both so pleased at how much they liked it. I legit saw it in use in their kitchen all the time.

Fast forward a year or two. That couple split up, the wife moved out and the new girlfriend moved in. She wrapped up that bowl and gave it to us for Christmas. She went on and on about how she hoped we liked it and how she thought of us as soon as she saw it.

That was over 15 years ago. We still have that bowl and use it every day. We do love it.

unicornz’s brother’s girlfriend is damn rude:

A girlfriend of my brother’s gave me a mustache waxing kit. I’m a lady and we had never talked about mustaches or waxing before.

Sourdoh has gone away’s mom sucks. There, I said it:

The year I came out, my mom got me a book along the lines of “Jesus Can Give Anyone A New Beginning!” and a stress ball.

I ripped the cover off the book, burned the pages and left the ashes (and cover, so she’d know what it was) in the living room. The stress ball I kept.

myopicprophet, a vegan, was given a turkey:

I have had a vegan diet for a very long time (not the judgemental kind as I live by my own ideals and respect others who live by theirs. Also, I have never met or wanted to meet another vegan) and I think it was Christmas of 2005 that my place of employment was handing out turkeys because they were too cheap to give actual Christmas bonuses. We were all in line grabbing turkeys one by one and when I got to the front, the woman handing out turkeys said to me with the weirdest “I am pretending to feel badly” face I had ever seen. She said (perhaps not verbatim), “We know you’re vegan and are likely insulted by this gift, but we didn’t know what grocery store you shop at to get you a gift card so we got you a turkey that you can give to someone else as a gift.”