Holidays can be a chaotic time for families in many ways! Reddit users were asked about their family holiday stories, here’s some of the best.
1. Wrapping paper is recyclable after all
Dog had a seizure and then pooped in the middle of the Christmas morning presents routine. All 10 of us sat around just watching it and yelling for someone to do something, when finally my brother-in-law got a piece of wrapping paper to catch the poop before it hit the floor. Poor dog, he was so overwhelmed by the joy of the wrapping paper.
ekul_reklawyks
2. The truth we deserve.
I grew up in the bible belt of Georgia and my favorite is the time when I was 8 and my step-mother got drunk and told me there was no Santa Claus 2 weeks before Christmas. I went to school and told all my friends. I felt I had uncovered a great truth, and that every kid I knew deserved to know how we were being lied to.
My parents got so many calls from angry families that I had to stand up in front of the whole school at a specially held assembly and tell them I was lying “because Santa only delivers presents to good boys and girls who believe and I just wanted them to doubt him so I could have all the presents for myself”.
Good times.
HeathenBarbie
3. Best to give the talk with a variety of perspectives on hand!
My entire family, I am talking cousins, grand parents, parents, aunts, uncles gave my 8 year old cousin, “the talk”…. Cannot wait for the next family gathering. Also, my loving father kicked off Easter dinner by saying, “we are gathered here to give thanks and remember the Easter bunny who died for our sins in that horrible horrible helicopter crash”…. pure horror at the young cousins place at the table….
ifaptotheexercist
4. A series of unfortunate Christmas memories.
At the time my family’s house was only heated by a wood stove, so at Christmas when we went to visit my grandparents all the pipes froze. While at my grandparents’ my oldest sister got a massive hickey from the hot tub’s water intake and couldn’t move for three days. When we finally got home, there was a blizzard, our van got stuck and we had to walk the last kilometre through feet of snow. A few days later my mother’s step mom came for a visit, only for our power to go out for three days. During which time I came damn close to burning the house down with a candle. As a treat my step grandmother took me and my other sister into town for dinner. My sister spilled hot soup all over her lap and got second degree burns. We lovingly call it the Christmas from hell.
Padreic
5. What a sweet and kind grandmother.
My grandmother is a jerk. Plain and simple. I love her because she’s my grandmother and I have to love her…but god that women is awful sometimes.
So a few years ago my entire family was at her house (we go there every year). My cousin Liz (one year younger than me) was there and my other cousin Jeff (7 years older than me) was only there for one day. Since it was the summer, we all decided to go out on the porch and talk that night. Apparently we woke my grandmother up. She got pretty pissed…so we all went inside and went to bed.
Next day, we all decide to apologize to my grandmother for being “disrespectful”. Each of us takes a turn apologizing. This is in front of our entire family, so it’s a little bit humiliating to begin with. I’m the last to go. I say I’m sorry. Grandma nods, opens her mouth and says this little gem:
“I wish I could love you as much as I love all my other grandchildren”.
kindnessabound
6. A spot of milk on your turkey?
This one makes me cringe. For Christmas dinner we always put our milk in pitchers due to the fact it’s easier to pour then the bags. so I was walking from the fridge to the table I tripped and spilled the whole pitcher of milk over the food my mom sister and Nana spent all day making. I can safely say I cried for like two days after that.
mypod66
7. Hey now, everyone has their time.
I figured out Santa Claus wasn’t real around age six (he used the same wrapping paper as my parents did for their presents to other people). I didn’t spread it around, though, because I wanted my little sister to still have fun and assumed people my own age would already know.
The next Christmas Eve went downhill when my aunt screamed in my face because I’d spoiled Santa Claus for my fourteen-year-old and older cousins, who apparently cried for weeks over it. These were kids old enough to be smoking pot, but apparently not old enough to know a guy didn’t actually break into their house once a year and leave them CDs and designer clothes.
CosineX
8. Resourceful
My brother received an extra large jar of nutella for x-mass, and my dad received a framed picture of the family from me. My dad tried to hammer a nail into the wall (to hang the picture) with the can of nutella, which shattered the plastic jar, leaving a brown stain on the wall. He also dropped the picture frame and shattered the glass. This man is also an orthopaedic surgeon…
[Deleted]
9. He wasn’t sagging!
I have a large extended family. We all gather at Grandma’s after Christmas dinner and just hang out and enjoy some yuletide bliss or whatever. Well, my male 16-year-old cousin was unwrapping gifts from Grandma. Grandma insisted that he go try on the pair of jeans he had just opened.
Keep in mind that there are probably 20-30 people all sitting around the perimeter of the livingroom. My cousin emerges from the bathroom sporting the new jeans. My Grandma beckons him to the middle of the room so that she can judge the jeans for herself.
She looks at him and then says, “You’re not SAGGING, are you!?!?!?” and simultaneously GRABS HIS CROTCH. He jumps about two feet in the air and screams, “GRANDMA!”
He wasn’t sagging.
To this day, I still occasionally text him and ask, “Remember the time Grandma grabbed your nuts?” Good times.
happygolucky66
10. Battle of the beans
My mother and her sister-in-law once both brought green bean casserole to the same Easter dinner. My mother immediately assumed she did this out of spite, and that green bean casserole led to the loudest shouting match I’ve ever heard.
I still can’t bring it up with her or she loses it.
Impastable
11. A stinky situation
When I was about 7 or 8 years old, we went out to the family farm for thanksgiving. It was a dairy farm but there were chickens on the loose too. My dad told me it would be ok for me to chase the chickens because there was no way I could catch one. I was so intent on proving him wrong that I paid no attention when the chicken (flapping its wings) crossed a large area of muck. I was running at top speed sunk up to my waist before I couldn’t move anymore and started sinking up to my neck. What I later found out was that they would hose down the cow shed occasionally and all the runoff would pool into a large pond of diarrhea. I was screaming for my life (still sinking) and my dad was laughing hysterically on the shore. Eventually my AUNT put on the hip waders and dragged me out before I drowned in cow diarrhea, and hosed me off by the barn. I’m 28 years old now and that story is still told at every family dinner.
zombiecharlesdarwin
12. This means war. Cookie war.
I could write a memoir composed solely of dysfunctional holiday memories, but the Cookie War has to take the cake. Perhaps the most important part of the story is to realize that everyone involved was an adult at the time.
We were with my mom for Thanksgiving, and thus, my maternal grandmother, who had been charged with bringing dessert. Over the course of the preceding week, she had separately called my sister, my brother, and I to let us know she would be bringing us each a spare box of “rainbow cookies” for us to take home. What she failed to do was call us each back to inform us that she was only able to obtain one extra box.
Rather than just telling three adults that she had failed to get their cookies, she walked in with the two boxes and said nothing. I thought nothing of it. Whatever, cookies. Delicious cookies, but still just cookies. Some time before dinner started, my grandmother, in her despair at failing to spoil her adult grandchildren like five-year-olds, decided the resolution was to give my younger brother the extra box in secret and then pretend she had totally forgotten any extra cookies.
Of course, my brother being the jerk baby-turned-middle child that he is, “snuck” the cookies up the stairs in plain view. My sister spotted him and accused him of stealing, at which point he plainly reported that he had been given the cookies and that he was grandma’s favorite with a smirk. At this point, I think they’re both just kidding around about being angry. But no, my laughter only managed to escalate things. It ended in a full-scale screaming match between my sister, my brother, and my bewildered grandmother while my then elementary school aged half brothers and I fell out of our chairs laughing.
To this day, I have not let my sister live the great cookie war down. She still insists that she was right on principle.
bears184
13. Droop n’ dip
In my friends family there are nudists. While sitting around the thanksgiving table, one of the older women accidentally dips one of her droopy boobs into the turkey gravy. They take said woman to the hospital for 2nd degree burns on her boob.
ajthesecond
14. Thankful doggy at least!
A)On Thanksgiving when I was around 7 my sister and I found a stray German Shepard. We felt so bad for him we took the turkey out of the oven and fed it to him.
B) My grandmother was legally blind so when my brother opened his present on Christmas morning and it was a lime green dress he politely told her that she had made a mistake. She looked right at him and said, “Grandma’s don’t make mistakes.”
platymage
15. A tale of two baskets
One Easter my family rented out a campground so we could all be together. I was about 20 and had my son who was 1 if I remember correctly. My son had an extravagant basket that I made him and my cousin’s was sad and pathetic (they are 6 months apart). So part of my family was already irritated with me for making my son special. They both got small rubber balls in their baskets so at least that was the same. When my cousin took my son’s ball I took it from him and gave him his to play with (no harm done) and my grandma flipped the hell out and started screaming at me that I treat my child better and threatened to shove said ball up my butt. I ran off crying, my mom yelled at my grandma from yelling at me then came after me. Whole family meltdown! It was a happy Easter that year.
HolyFlyingPenguins
16. Horrible. Just horrible.
I was about 11 and my twin brothers were about 4. I sauntered downstairs one Christmas morning only to find every present-my brother’s, mine, my infant sister’s, and my parent’s- all ripped open and spread around the living room. I looked at the little devils with what had to be a deep burning hatred and wasted no time waking my parents up to tell them Christmas was ruined. Mom cried, I cried, the boys cried, the baby was probably confused and dad tried to cheer us all up…
EmDawg
17. The end of a phase.
Many Easters ago, when my brother was almost five, he shot the priest. See, my baby brother looooooved to play cowboy. It was his favorite thing. He’d throw fits if he couldn’t bring one of his toy guns with him everywhere, and eventually my mom just gave up and let him. However, she always made him take a gun that was just a solid chunk of plastic- not one of his cap guns. Well, Mom was singing in the choir that year and my dad was a Eucharistic minster, and she left it up to my aunt to get us around. My aunt didn’t know which guns my brother was allowed to bring, and he was being fussy, so she just grabbed one and threw it in the car. So we’re sitting there in the front pew, the whole big family, and my brother’s on the end. The priest is walking around with a bucket of holy water, which he is sprinkling us with, and my brother is fiddling with his gun. When the priest approaches the pew, he points it at him and pulls the trigger. Only it wasn’t a solid piece of plastic; it was a loaded cap gun. Church is silent, and then BANG. The priest drops the bucket of holy water on the floor (which makes ANOTHER loud bang), clutches his heart, and staggers backwards while people start freaking out because they think he’s just been shot. My brother is crying, my dad just looks like he wants to die, and my sister and I are silent for a bit. Then we realize what happened and start laughing our asses off because we can see that it’s a cap gun. Church is in panic, the cops come… it was a mess. It was also the end of my brother’s cowboy phase.
wrathlet
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