Unhappy Holidays: People Share Their Unforgettable Christmas Stories
For some of us, the Christmas season is a time of joy, merriment, and good cheer. But for these poor people, the winter holidays are more like a trainwreck than an enchanted sleigh ride.
Raise a toast to the messiest time of the year and enjoy these jaw-dropping stories of people's most unforgettable yuletide memories.
1. Table Talk
This last Christmas, I found out that not only had my mom already been previously married and divorced before I was born, but that my dad had also had another kid before he had gotten married to my mom. So, that means I have a secret half-brother or sister out there somewhere, who I have never met. That's already bad enough, but the real kicker was the way I found out about it all.
I found out from my brand new sister-in-law, who had just joined the family. Apparently, she had been doing some digging and research into our family history and she discovered all of these details.
She had no idea that they had been a secret, though, and she assumed us kids already knew about them. So, she just casually brought it up out of the blue on Christmas Eve while we were baking cookies.
2. This Has To Be An Elaborate Prank, Right?
I used to work as a mall Santa. One time, a little girl no more than five was screaming when it was her turn. Kids get scared of Santa, it’s not that uncommon.
Her dolled up mom was having none of her child's tantrum and the elves were pleading with her to not put the girl on my lap. She did and her kid instantly stopped screaming.
Just had this look of pure hatred at her mom for the remainder of the photo session.
I swear, I thought I was on Candid Camera, it looked so acted out. Attempting to talk to the little terror, I asked her what she wanted for Christmas, she looked at me and softly said just above a whisper, “for my Mommy to die.”
Noped myself to a break after that one.
3. Plain Cruelty
My mom once got me a gag scratch-off lotto ticket for Christmas. On it, I had won something like $100,000 - one of the grand prizes for a $20 ticket, so it would've been a huge payout at my age of seventeen.
She sat through me calling my father (divorced parents), other friends and family members telling them how much better things would be for the next few years, especially college, and that they would all get a fair share.
This went on for about twenty minutes until she told me it was a gag ticket, as she burst out laughing. I left her house Christmas morning on the spot, storming out blind with rage. On the way home, I had to call everybody back and explain what happened, near tears. It took me almost all year to forgive her. I can't recall anything worse that has happened to me. It was one of the most intense mixtures of feeling simultaneous hate/rage/sadness I've ever felt.
4. Being Santa Can Be Soul-Crushing
I was a mall Santa once and will never do it again. Some of the things still haunt me. One little girl was the sweetest most well-spoken girl and asked that her parents would love each other again so they could get back together and they could be a family again. The pain in her voice still hurts my heart almost a decade later. Another boy wanted his dad to come back from Iraq.
Another little boy wanted his dad back and told me he passed in Afghanistan. One asked for his parents to get jobs, because they both lost them.
A few others just ran to me and gave me the biggest and most loving hugs and though those aren't really sad they really struck a nerve with me, just such genuine love from complete strangers.
I am not an emotional person normally, but even typing this brought me to tears.
Kids should not be worrying about some of these things. I would never do it again, you expect toys and gadgets but things like these I never expected and they will be things that break my heart for the rest of my life.
