Christmas disaster

One Christmas Eve was certainly one to remember! Having been out with friends, dd1 then maybe 20, came home after 11 pm with a live lobster which she’d ‘rescued’ because some drunken idiot bloke who’d won it in a raffle, and a few others, found it amusing to use the poor thing like a rugby ball and chuck it around the pub.

Distraught dd was bent on instantly driving to Brighton (not much over an hour’s drive from here) and putting it back in the sea.
My mother, who was staying, had forty fits at this idea - for a start it was a very frosty night (icy roads) and there would be ‘yobbos’ about.

So we agreed with dd that either dh or I would go with her first thing in the morning, to put it in the sea.
We left it outside in a bucket with some water overnight, but in the morning it was dead ? no doubt because of all the rough treatment the night before.
I could have done without all that drama though - especially when I still had presents to wrap! (I’m rather more organised nowadays.)

Another story from my childhood, I was about 6. A preiod before household fridges, let alone freezers. One of DF's work colleagues bought some turkey pullets and my father, with others, each invested in one.

Our turkey pullet was a winner, when slaughtered for Christmas, it weighed 22lbs. Our household consisted of my mother, who was 8 months pregnant, 2 children, aged 6 and 4 and my father, who was going away on business for two weeks on Boxing Day. It was also a very warm Christmas.

To begin with the turkey had to be dismembered to get it into the oven, and then, on Boxing Day my mother was left, with vast quantities of turkey, and only her and 2 children to eat it and nowhere to keep it cool.

I remember we were eating turkey for every meal, including breakfast and my mother was casseroling and stewing it and offering it to all the neighbours, i can remember taking some to school to give to a teacher.

How much of it had to be thrown away in the end I do not know.

One year, with lots of people staying, I had a very crowded fridge, so I put the turkey in the utility room overnight, as it was very cold in there - t was a sort of outhouse. Next morning when I visited it, it had been nibbled and there were mouse droppings all around - gulp!

I said nowt, especially as my OH was a rather obsessional person and also a doctor and would have had a fit. I just cleaned it off, wrapped it in foil and put it in the oven.

That year I had taken a lot of trouble to make some rather posh stuffing with all sorts of tasty things in it.

Part way through the meal, one of my DDs said "What is this in the stuffing? - it looks like mouse droppings!?"

I nearly choked on my meal! - but just smiled sweetly and said it was cloves - which it was.

No-one to this day knows about the mice.

One year I carried in the roast potatoes, caught my sleeve on the door handle and dropped the dish which broke into several pieces scattering the red hot potatoes all over the floor.
We had potato waffles that year.

When children were small, I took our frozen turkey out of the freezer and defrosted it. It was Christmas Eve as I always prepare the Christmas meal the day before. The turkey felt slightly greasy and I thought it had a slight whiff, but DH had a good sniff and said it looked and smelt fine so I prepared the bird and I put it out in the shed to stay cool

DPiL arrived and my MiL asked to see the turkey. We opened the shed door and the smell hit us. DMil went a bit closer and hasily withdrew saying there were blow flies on it.

It was just after 2.30 on Christmas Eve, but as the turkey had come from a local shop we hastily put it in the car and drove down to the shop with it. Meanwhile DMiL headed for the local butcher and managed to buy a brace of oven ready pheasant.

We got to the shop with the turkey and the shop keeper greeted us with a wail of, 'Oh no, not another one!' It seems they had been to the cash & carry 2 months earlier and their usual brand of frozen turkeys were out of stock, so they bought a couple of dozen of the brand available, which was not known to them. Ours was the 5th to be returned because it was off. There was one ordered uncollected turkey left in the shop (different brand) and 10 minutes before the shop shut. They asked us to wait and on the dot of 3.00pm, they put up the closed sign and gave us the turkey.

We then had to defrost it. We put it in a bucket and poured hot water over it and changed it frequently, we worked at defrosting the cavity so we could put hot water in that as well. We had it defrosted by 10.00pm,. My lovely MiL meanwhile had made stuffing for me from scratch. Until then I had always used Paxo and the Christmas lunch was as planned. We celebrated the New Year with the pheasant, which we had frozen in the meanwhile.

39 weeks pregnant with DS3 my parents were hosting Xmas. We headed over with the younger two late morning where my eldest who is severely autistic and learning disabled took up residence by the microwave and proceeded to scream every time the microwave stopped. He was literally screaming all day balancing on top of a high stool.

By about 7pm I had a bit of funny turn & had to go into maternity to get checked out. Just very high blood pressure which slowly came down with a cup of tea and a bit of peace.

We arrived back home around 11pm - parents had take the boys back to ours - to find ds1 still screaming.

I had got up very early on Christmas morning to “put the turkey in”, I struggled with the heavy baking dish and thankfully slammed the door. The vibration caused a dish on the top of the dresser to fall, flying across the kitchen, it struck the work top and a sliver whizzed off it and sliced open the index finger on my left hand. There was blood everywhere. My DH elected to clean it up whilst my DS1 drove me to A&E, having noted my flowing dressing gown, and suggested that I got dressed rather than swanning round like Barbara Cartland. (Was amazed that he knew who Barbara Cartland was). When we arrived it was empty save for a somewhat manic girl in a party hat who was running up and down blowing out one of those things with a feather on the end that makes a loud noise. This did not go down well with DS who is not a morning person! The girl disappeared to be replaced by a nurse, who did a lot of tutting about the amount of blood. Eventually the curtain was pulled back to reveal the doctor. Yes, the was the girl we had first seen now with a white coat on and minus the hat and feather thing. However she did a great job stitching my finger whilst the nurse went to attend to a new arrival, but I have been left with a white scar running from the tip of my finger to halfway down it, though it only hurt a bit when I was digging into the turkey.

This goes back a good few years. I really pride myself on my Christmas gravy which I always start the day before by making a stock out of the giblets. One year I went to get the giblets out of the turkey and there weren't any!. Now for me this was a serious issue. Christmas Eve also happens to be DH's birthday, so I always try to make sure that there is no blast minute shopping to be done as I don't drive and don't expect DH to have to do any on his day. I phoned the supermarket (Safeways. Do you remember them) and played merry hell with the young sounding manager. I could imagine him telling his family later about this mad sounding middle aged lady ranting about the lack of giblets!. He was terribly apologetic and said he would send me some. A short time later there was a knock at the door and a young shop assistant was standing there with a huge turkey in her arms, complete with giblets! What a win win situation! I got my giblets, a second turkey and the girl got time out of a manically busy supermarket!

Another year, I only realized that I had forgotten to serve the sprouts with Christmas dinner when I founded them the next day, still on the stove, in the back cabin of our narrowboat.

I wouldn't care, except I love sprouts!

Halfway through cooking the Christmas dinner, the oven door actually fell off on my hand!

Great thread! In the 70s mum and dad were always invited to the neighbours for a Christmas drink on Christmas day. Mum usually declined as she was busy making dinner. However one year she agreed as she felt sorry for them. They had a son with a life limiting disease. Anyway one o'clock came and went, as did two. My brother and I weren't bothered as Christmas top of the pops were on but both grans were tutting like skippy, the Bush kangaroo. Half two in slides my absolutely sloshed parents. The christmas dinner was 'interesting'. Burnt bird, no vegetables and mash only. We laughed about it for years.

Slightly off subject, my OH works at Asda on counters, yesterday he had this conversation with a middle aged male customer

"What time does your your cooked chickens come out of the ovens on Christmas morning?"

OH reply "We do not open on Christmas Day".

Irate reply. "Well what the hell am I supposed to do for my Christmas dinner then?"

Christmas Day was coming to an end....the phone rang and the lights went out at the same moment. A neighbour in farmer was ringing to say they had suspected foot and mouth on their farm, and a frog had become impacted in the pelton water wheel system that provided our electricity!

Many Christmases ago we were looking after our neighbour's house for a few days while she spent Christmas with her sister. I started on the mammoth preparation for lunch but I grew concerned that the oven was playing up. I had a double oven at the time and the smaller one had given up the ghost. The potatoes were just as I had put them in. I rang my neighbour and asked if I could cook the roast potatoes in her oven. The lovely lady agreed and I must have given our other neighbours something to chat about watching me dashing back and forth with tea towel covered roasting tins.

Following on from elegran’s story of the unfortunate maid, my daughter suffered a similar incident. She was working as a waitress in the local hotel during her Christmas break from university and had a busy Christmas Day serving lunches. On her way to one table with a large bowl of trifle she slid on a piece of roast potato that someone had dropped. She managed to place the trifle on the table and stay upright but had plunged her hand in the bowl of trifle up to the wrist. Fortunately....ahem.....there was er.....‘the other’ bowl in the kitchen.......

One Christmas morning my husband was passing through the utility room on his way to take our dog for a walk. He over balanced, fell backwards through the door to the loo and cracked his head on the lavatory pan, resulting in a large gash. Much of the rest of the day was spent in A&E!! I've no memory of Christmas dinner that year!

I’m enjoying this thread. Made me think of my friend’s disastrous Christmas Day as a newly wed nearly 50 yrs ago.

Her in laws sent them a turkey from their farm. She hadn’t realised her father in law had hidden a surprise in the cavity of the turkey. She put the turkey in the oven with a half bottle of whisky inside it.

2 hours later there was an almighty bang and the door blew off the oven!

My son’s fridge freezer packed up one year....on Christmas Eve! They were hosting dinner the next day. Luckily, because of this, I hadn’t bought too much, and was able to take everything.

Many years ago DH and I were hosting Christmas dinner for eight of our family. I had put the frozen turkey on top of the eye level grill the night before. Christmas morning I came downstairs and our very naughty cat had pulled the turkey onto the floor and eaten half of one of it’s legs.
I just washed it, cooked it and DH carved it in the kitchen before bringing it into the dining room.
No one was any the wiser and we all survived.
Bad puss! But she was gorgeous and quickly forgiven with her dinner of turkey giblets.

Mine wasn’t a culinary disaster - more a medical one. DS, who wasn’t quite 2, hadn’t been too well the previous day, just grumpy, a little hot and off his food. On Christmas morning he was quite lethargic, didn’t want to play with any of his new toys and cuddled his blanket. He perked up after he’d had medication to reduce his temperature so we set off for Nanna & Grandad’s. Things went rapidly downhill from that point, he just lay on their settee and then the projectile vomiting started and kept happening. We bundled everyone including our 2 dd into the car and headed for home. More projectile vomiting in the car as I held him on my knee. (This was pre car seat days). Got home, called emergency doc for our practice and following a visit I found myself and ds in the local paediatric isolation unit. Turned out he had a rotavirus and was on a drip for 48 hours. We spent 6 days together in isolation including his 2nd birthday. Not a Christmas I’ll forget!

My mum was hosting Christmas dinner for all the family and part way through cooking the turkey, the oven door fell off while she was basting it! None of us were able to fix it back on so panic set in. Luckily our neighbours over the road were early risers and had already eaten their dinner so we took over their cooker and finished the preparations. There was a constant stream of people going across the road carrying dishes of food.

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One Christmas Day a friend drained the hot fat off the turkey into the sink. Outside it was icy cold and snowing, so the fat congealed and blocked the drainpipe. They had to call out an emergency plumber, at Christmas Day prices, to clear it.

Great thread........I look forward to reading some more disasters

One of my neighbours who
I knew quite well, we had children the same age and we used to walk to school together to pick them up, had the MiL from hell.
The H was the only child, father died youngish , and she devoted her life to her dependence on him.
Holiday we’re only ever from Saturday afternoon to Saturday morning so he could take his mother shopping , every Saturday was devoted to her needs.
One year he went as usual on Christmas morning to fetch her to the their house for the day and found her dead in bed.
My neighbour never got over the thought that she had planned it that way.
I hasten to add it was completely natural, she was an old lady but R thought she had hung on deliberately.