Your Most Magical New Year's Eve

I’m sick of beginning each Pissing Contest entry with some lachrymose observation on this very bad year, so in the final week of 2020, I’m switching gears. Let’s have some fun! Tell us about your most magical New Year’s Eve experience! Did you get engaged? Did you and your BFF party hop into the next millennium? Did you enjoy a quiet night in with family and friends? Were you alone, comforted by take-out, asleep by the time the fireworks began? Did you attempt to recreate the wonder this year? I want to know everything.

For the record, my “most magical” New Year’s Eve was spent working as a DJ and getting a midnight kiss from a dude I was absolutely infatuated with, went on to date for a second, and then he left me for a woman who is truly the love of his life. It was sweet and I’m grateful.

Anyway, let’s look at last week’s winners! These are your best holiday stories.

anneelliott1993, this is… an interesting take:

I swear I’m not drunk or usually maudlin, but this year is the best year. You may not know this, but there’s a pandemic on, so we didn’t have to visit either of our families (drama and conservatives, fortunately not both in the same family) nor were we able to travel (which I love but it’s a shitton of work and I’m not complaining, just saying it was super nice to wake up in my own bed and yes I am old). No one I love has Covid. It’s the little things.

So my day went like this: wake up, assist in making bagels, leisurely open gifts with Mr. E and Boy E – chatting pleasantly all the while. Mr. E is a notoriously cheap and reluctant gift giver, but this year he went. to. town. I got nothing fancy or pricey, but thoughtful stuff I will use daily and remember fondly each time.

I had no idea how much stress I carried around from either family drama over the holidays (blended family nonsense). I caught myself feeling anxious when I wrestled with some packaging because my self-centered sister would get annoyed that I was taking too long, then realized I was with people who were happy to watch me open a present they’d selected for me, and wrestle with packaging in their turn while I watched, anticipating their delight.

So yeah. This year was pretty nice.

montyiam, I’m so glad she puked!:

The best part of our Christmas this year was when the puppy threw up multiple times…

Backstory —> Due to COVID we did not get together with our families for the first time ever, which was sad, but we made the best of it and decided to call our parents at the same time after presents, a meal etc. While we were both on the phone, our 7 month old pup came prancing into the kitchen with half of a dark chocolate cookie and a very happy expression. (100% my fault for leaving the cookies on an end table while we were on the phone) Chocolate is super bad for dogs and we determined that she had eaten about three of them and at her size this would have been bad. After franticly searching online for what to do, and trying to find an emergency vet in our area that was open on Christmas Day, we read online (thank you ASPCA!) that the best thing to do if we could not get to a vet would be to induce vomiting with hydrogen peroxide.

Three teaspoons and ten minutes later, she vomited the entire contents of her stomach onto the driveway including enough chocolate to have gotten her quite sick and probablydone some damage. After finally consulting with a vet, we just had to monitor her for the rest of the night and she is perfectly fine today.

Devonna, you warmed my dead heart:

My family has always gone all-in for Christmas Eve. We’re a family of band/choir geeks and drama nerds, all grown up. This isn’t one continuous memory, but rather a collection of remembrances.

Mom passed away this year, so Christmas Eve traditions will look very different next year.

Since my grandma’s death, and my uncle’s subsequent move up north, my mom has hosted Christmas Eve. She has these ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ plates/glasses. She had three sets of twelve. Every year, I would set the table with matching plates and glasses. Following our meal, we would ‘sing our plates.’ The more drama-oriented, showier cousins would fight for the lower numbers so they could sing more. The shyer cousins would fight to get 11 or 12. I usually ended up somewhere around 6 or 7, but my mom’s younger brother always made a huge production out of “FIIIIIIIVE GOOOOOOOLDEN RIIIIINGS!”

In 2014, my cousin, her husband, and their daughter were coming home for Christmas from England. They only do this every few years, and it was the first one for their daughter, so we tried to make it extra special. I spent a long time making a homemade pudding – that is every dried fruit imaginable in a cake. I dropped it off at my folks’ several weeks before Christmas and asked Dad to spray it with brandy every day. I bought Christmas Crackers from Barnes and Noble. Christmas Eve came and there were over 20 of us. As a family of musicians, we sang carols for hours (which we still do) while I play the piano. My uncle read the corniest rendition of “Night Before Christmas” you can imagine (another annual family tradition, that even appeared in our Christmas Eve zoom call this year). We ended the night by opening the crackers, which each contained a kazoo, and formed a kazoo band.

My Christmas Eve is definitely not for everyone, but we’re a very close-knit, loving, loud, musically talented family and though I missed seeing everyone this year, having a Christmas Eve zoom call (complete with caroling) with almost all my mom’s family was amazing.