“Strangers Invited Into My Living Room for Christmas”: Your Worst Christmas and New Year Stories

A break under the tree

Christmas 2018, I’ve been in a relationship for almost two years. A long distance relationship : she in Lille, me in Lyon. We see each other at least once a month, at one or the other’s house, and we call each other every day to catch up for hours, report on the day, get news, make plans… I should also move in with her, at North, a few weeks later to bridge the gap.

Christmas is coming. This year it happens in my family, in Brittany. We haven’t seen each other for a good month, and I look at it, not without a certain impatience. He arrives a few hours after me, at the same time as my brother, his girlfriend and their children (did I forget to tell you that my girlfriend is one of my sister-in-law’s best friends?). Family dinners. Large table. The evening passes. Even at night.

Morning comes and I feel something is wrong. It’s December 23rd. When I wake up, in my teenage bedroom, the tension is palpable. A lip-smacking greeting, a six-foot head, and a terrific (if a little clichéd) phrase: ” We need to talk. “ I remain calm, a little numb, and the discussion begins. There are tears. Strong arguments too.

She doesn’t love me. She doesn’t think so either (and she’s right) and she sees no reason to continue. But to be sure, she had to see me. Prove to yourself that it wasn’t just about distance. After a few hours that seem to have lasted years, still a little distraught, we leave the room, calmly. I take her back to the station and we part as “good friends”.

I go home. The news spread and when I returned everyone was walking on eggshells. The frames with our photos are flipped or hidden. My sister-in-law gets angry: “ Christmas is ruined.”. They are all very kind to me. Even too cute. I regularly catch looks full of commiseration. Let’s move on to the gifts received that year, to which they were entirely dedicated “my new life in Lille”.

Without me explaining it, I The last Christmas from Wham! running on loop in my head. I spend every holiday in cotton. A little absent. Even today this period remains vague for me. But overlookedshe is sure she made the best decision possibleand a certain admiration for the courage and honesty of his approach.

This break is however the best thing that ever happened to me. I stayed in Lyon – I still live there – and two months later I met the woman with whom I now share my life. The one I started a family with and am completely and madly in love with.

Kevin

One guest too many

New Year’s Eve 2019, it’s my first year of graduate school and I’ve been dating a guy for eight months. This same boy is an only child and has family problems like everyone else. His father and mother had just separated after years of conflict. I’ll give you this, I’ve come across the typical cliche of the mother-in-law watching over her son since he blessed her with his birth. I think that in her opinion I was the worst person for her son, I had absolutely no intention of studying science after my high school diploma because I had decided to do a “passion job”. And I was too eccentric for his tastes because I have a bit of humor, something she apparently didn’t know. I was also her therapist during her divorce, when she took me in her car one day and we were stuck together for 45 minutes. What could I, 17 and a half years old, know about life and advise a 49 year old woman who had just divorced her husband after twenty years of cohabitation, three of which she cheated on? Absolutely nothing and she belittled her husband in front of me and my parents, so that we all begin to hate her, like her.

So I wanted to celebrate our first New Year’s Eve together, with the friends we had kept away from each other since high school. I’m not sure how we decided to throw a party at my boyfriend’s childhood home, but who do I see when I arrive? Mother of him! He would spend New Year’s Eve with us : my boyfriend, our two friends and me.

Era the longest, most endless five hours of my life. We played boring games, but the worst thing was that our friends and I were extremely embarrassed because she was putting “the divorce and the fact that she was left alone for New Year’s Eve while her ex-husband was who knows where with his new partner, oh well! Definitely in Brittany! She never took me to Brittany” on the carpet every five minutes. We watched the countdown on TV: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… Happy New Year! Followed by : “Party’s over guys, I’m taking you back (no one had a license at the time)!” Sarah*, you can sleep here, you’ll take the train tomorrow. » So I went to bed at 12.12am all alone, waiting for my boyfriend and his mother to return.

Will be*

The Christmas surprise

I was living with a roommate who had notified me that he would be lending his room to his brother and his wife a few days before Christmas. But what was my amazement when I woke up on the morning of the 25th and discovered that in my living room there was a whole host of unknown people! The rest of his family had invited themselves for the holidays, without telling me. I didn’t even dare tell them that it bothered me. So I packed my bags and ended up at a friend’s house. They celebrated Christmas at my house.

Jane*

A Christmas we don’t wish on anyone

At the end of 2015, my family exceptionally decided to spend a great Christmas by inviting all the cousins, brothers and sisters, grandparents… And meeting up in a chalet-gîte to celebrate Christmas together, in an environment we were not used to A. It’s true that it was a change from family gatherings at your grandparents’ house!

A few months earlier this Christmas party which promised to be grandiose, our family purchased a new house, although a little old, which needed a lot of renovation work inside to be able to live in it. We spent Wednesday afternoons, weekends and all holidays there… A few days before Christmas, during a day of intense work, my father had a heart attack while digging a large layer of earth outside. At first everything was fine… Then a faint cry came from his mouth, and finally nothingness, motionless, and he collapsed to the ground. We then called the firefighters, who immediately took care of him and took him to hospital..

I was still young at the time and don’t remember the details, but he was treated properly and stayed in hospital for a few weeks. So we moved on of a merry Christmas with a large family in an exceptional chalet, a sad Christmas with a small family at my father’s bedside in hospital. At least we were together!

Luckily he is better today. We managed to postpone this great Christmas to the following year. What’s quite strange is that my mother did the same thing to us a few years before, she had a thyroid attack a few days before Christmas and she also spent New Year’s Eve in hospital. It seems that my parents really don’t like end-of-year holidays, and would do anything to avoid them… (humor). In short, both my parents, within a few years of each other, had a very close encounter with death in the period preceding Christmas. Fortunately, today, everything came back for them.

Damian

* Names have been changed.

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