Christmas catastrophes.

Christmas 2020. I had Covid. I was extremely ill and hospitalised after Christmas. I lay on the sofa in my pyjamas and dressing gown, ate nothing, and opened no presents. I was incubating pneumonia I found out later in hospital.

That’s how I do baked spuds now, Monica. Much quicker than the old school method.

The water was about 2.5cm so floorings are ruined and furniture was standing in it. We’ve no idea how long it had been as we were away on holiday for ten days. Luckily the electrics were ok. We’re at the drying out phase now.

I’ve discovered that you can buy gadgets like smoke alarms but for water. They sit on the floor, tucked away, and send info to your phone. I might invest in some.

We were home on leave for Christmas in the late 1950s and staying with my grandmother when the entire household contracted flu. Everyone was at different stages of the illness as we approached Christmas Day, some eating, some not. My poor mother wobbled her way to the local grocers and bought 8 Birds Eye frozen chicken dinners - between her and my grandmother they managed to heat them. That was Christmas dinner that year, all set out in a little foil tray!

Not my catastrophe but my elder daughter's. She had a holiday job when she was at university waitressing at the local hotel. She was serving Christmas lunch and things had gone well until pudding course. She then served - or tried to - a large fresh cream trifle but slid on a dropped piece of roast potato. She managed to stay upright and get the bowl onto the table but ended up with her hand buried up to the wrist in the trifle. Of course it had to be the last one!

We’ve had a few memorable illnesses and accidents over the years. My mum ending up in A & E after slipping on ice after midnight mass, DH stretchered over the toys and general chaos to hospital with a severe asthma attack on Christmas morning. Me limping around with dreadful backache after shifting a wardrobe to do some last minute decorating, as you do. One very cold Christmas week our toilet outlet pipe froze when we’d all the adult children and partners staying for two nights - fortunately our neighbour was going away and gave us her key, so we had an endless parade of people trooping in and out of her house. There was the year I lost control of the roasting tin and sloshed turkey fat all over the kitchen floor - we’d to hoist several elderly relatives to the dinner table over what was to all intents and purposes a skating rink.

Today my fridge went on the blink, and is definitely not as cold as it should be. We’re hosting on Monday, but luckily most of the Christmas provisions are in the freezers, so we’ll manage till after Christmas with the help of a very cold coal cellar and the car boot.

There was one year I forgot to defrost the turkey. PIL were supposed to be for lunch but MIL was ill and couldn't come - what a relief!. Another year I decided to make a Christmas pudding for the first time and it was mouldy when I got it out on Christmas day - since then have always bought one.

I gave our dish washer to my brother and I very rarely use a microwave so I would not miss either of them.
Glad you got sorted though and can make your plans a reality without anymore problems best wishes.🎄

The central heating stopped heating one very cold Christmas and I cooked in the freezing kitchen in many layers, anorak, scarf and woolly hat.
Luckily we had a gas fire in the sitting room so it could have been worse

On Christmas Eve 1974 I was very pregnant, the baby was due New Year’s Eve. I was queuing in the Co Op for veg when I realised the bump felt very low. So I went into hospital at 8pm and had my little girl half an hour before Christmas Day. Meanwhile, my husband stayed at home with our 2 year old daughter and then in the morning took her to my parents while he went to work. Yes, he was a policeman. Christmas afternoon they all came to visit me and our baby. I have a photo of my 2 year old sitting eating Xmas dinner at my parents’ looking very glum. And it’s that little baby’s birthday tomorrow!

does anyone remember the Bernard matthews(?) ad for Christmas lunch?

Harrassed woman with about 10 people round the table putting out all the accoutrements of Christmas lunch on the table, roasties, sprouts, roast parsnips, cranberry sauce, bread sauce, gravy, stuffing etc etc. Then a voice off says 'What about the turkey? And she suddenly freezes when she realises that in preparing everything else she has completely forgotten to cook the turkey.

Loving this thread!! Thanks everyone for posting your horror stories .... But all those green, slimy turkeys - Yuk

Everything turkey is just such hard work, I can’t summon much enthusiasm any more. The planning, size, the cost, the order, collection, the queue, and getting it home. How unwieldy does a bird/one’s food need to be? The prep, the stuffing, the taking over of the oven, basting, timing. Then after all of that, immediately where to park the wretched thing……it’s everywhere. It takes over the fridge, the worktops and hangs around like a bulky parcel in a busy space.
Used to be so glad to see it go.

Years ago we went for a Boxing Day walk and tea at a friend’s cottage on a beautiful estate where he managed a Stud. Our kids were desperate to meet their Daughter’s Christmas kitten, but first, after our walk, we each walked in some fabulous horses and bedded them down for the night. Then indoors…..catastrophe…..kitten missing. All of us set to and thoroughly searched the entire house - everywhere. Much concern and children’s disappointment and it took forever. They went off for further searches. I thought we’d really earned our Christmas cake and handed my friend some milk for the tea. Inside the fridge lurked the turkey carcass after their lunchtime meal. And inside the bird, a fat, fluffy kitten, sound asleep and curled in a ball!
A very happy 🎄ending, plenty of turkey meals to come for the dogs and the kitten and a novel way to reclaim that space.

This year it looks like we won't be having Christmas dinner at DDs after all. Both her, her husband and both DGSs are ill with a COVID like illness. I've never known poor DD to be so ill. Looks like it'll be just me and DH having Christmas home alone 😢. Luckily, we still have our contributions to the dinner so we'll have lots of champagne and crackers plus a huge chocolate sponge Yule log!

A few years ago we were celebrating Christmas on Boxing Day as our youngest couldn’t get a flight home until the 26th.
On Christmas night as I went to bed , I asked my husband to remove the turkey from the fridge if he got up first.
As it happened I got up first to find the turkey on the worktop smelling rank!
I waited until 10.00am and called M&S to see if they had any turkeys, I was very lucky and got one.
The butchers Kelly Bronze turkey that cost over a £100 went in the bin.

My sympathies to those who had truly upsetting Christmasses, and for those who will be missing loved ones deeply.
For those who can laugh afterwards, here is Megson, with a sentiment we can get behind:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D9mHAhXZe0

Here's a quick recipe for roast potatoes. Peel them, chop them, coat them with sunflower or rapeseed oil, and put in the oven for about 45 minutes at about 200 degrees C. Add fresh rosemary or rock salt if you wish. No need to buy goose grease, and is suitable for vegetarians and vegans.
Love your stories. Our worst was on New Year's Day many years ago when I accidentally set fire to the oven and we had to send for the fire brigade. Our daughters were mortified. No serious harm done.

There was the year MIL got drunk and locked herself in the only loo, before dinner - we went home in the end, can’t remember what we had to eat. OH was happy as he hates turkey.

In 2020, the year of COVID, it was our year to have a full house over Christmas day, 7 of us, so in Ocrtober, as I alsys did, I ordered a large turkey. Enough for 7 turkey lovers.

At the end of November DH had a heart attack, rushed to hospital, bypass surgery, so far so good, bit then the hospital gave hima antobiotic resistant infection, so numbers for Christmas fell from 7 to 6.

Then Boris imposed a lock down. On Christmas day, DD (our bubble partner) and I sat at the dining table, our view of each other blocked by this enormous turkey. After lunch, we cut it in half and immediately froze half for.... Easter? The rest was dismantled and much of it frozen to be eaten over the next few months.
DH made a good recovery, being discharged in early January

Our family had a December 1988 near catastrophe. Though not a true casastrophe for our family, mum was verklept for months.

Years ago when our brother was a new litigator in NY. He flew to London early December to do depo work. Wonderful, we all were together a bit of the festive season. He missed his flight back to NY, over Lockerbie. The causes were not immediately certain. Flights left at random times, near empty, fear of flying - when and how was the bomb loaded, why?

Christmas, on the motorways and in London hotels was certainly difficult for our larger family, but fortunate - he is still with us!

I was about 8, and the cat jumped on the freshly decorated Christmas tree, and all the glass baubles smashed, and all the shops closed. I went from corner shop to corner shop, knocking at the back door, to ask if they had spare baubles, and none did. At the last one, the two older spinster sisters told me they no longer bothered with a tree, and that they still had the family baubles up in the attic. Off came the ladder, and they told me to climb as they were too old and stiff, and where to look- and the miracle happened. Our tree was up again, re-decorated and ready to be lit (with real candles, of course). And the beloved cat banished from the house for a couple of days!

What a truly lovely Christmas story Fleurpepper. Thank you for sharing the magic.

What is 'verklept'?

I know a Yiddish word which is similar. Verklempt. It means to be overcome with emotion. Perhaps this is what Norah meant. It fits the context of her anecdote.

Same in Afrikaans I think- 'ver' in German introduces a negative concept. Translations of foreign words often have several accepted spellings.

The context tells the story.

At a very trivial level. One of my responsibilities at work was to ensure that contract bid documents from my employer went out in time to fall within bid deadlines. With most contracts being for distant developing countries and bids often not ready until the last minute it was real edge of the seat work at times.

A few days after Lockerbie I was hauled into a senior manager's office. A bid document had not arrived at its destination at all. What had happened? I contacted the courier, who came backe later that day to say that it had been on the plane that came down at Lockerbie.