Holiday Hell
2002
Archive
I just want to say how much I enjoy your
site - I was, however, congratulating myself on running with a kinder and
gentler circle of friends than many of your contributors when I realized I
had a sad little story of my own to tell. It's either holiday, guests, or
relatives from hell - it involves all of them. It's not a huge thing, but
it had a profound effect on me, and was unfortunately a huge warning bell
about my first marriage - I should have listened to it!
In the first year of my first marriage,
my then-husband informed me that in his family, the newest bride cooked
Thanksgiving dinner, and everyone came over to the new couple's house for
the day. I thought this was a nice idea, and threw myself into planning a
great dinner - requiring a little research, as I am English, and had not
really done "Thanksgiving Dinner" - but I assumed it couldn't be
any harder than doing a Christmas dinner. I *love* parties - I love to
entertain, I love to cook, and I am happiest when my guests are happy.
These days, it's much easier to entertain, but back then, I was 19 and
living in a tiny apartment with a galley kitchen smaller than my current
master bathroom. I planned everything carefully, however, and pulled
together table, chairs, linens, decorations, and food - I really wanted
the day to be nice for my in-laws, since they were spending the day in our
tiny apartment. I picked out the freshest, best foods we could afford, and
planned a three-course dinner that I hoped would please even finicky
tastes.
The day arrived - I had been cooking
since the night before, and I planned for one o'clock to eat. 1pm rolled
around, no relatives. Two. Three. I put the turkey wrapped in foil in the
oven to keep it warm and moist - I figured the other stuff could re-heat
when our guests arrived. At 4pm, they arrived en masse. I bustled around,
got everyone drinks (non-alcoholic - they're Baptists), and started laying
things out while my husband talked with his family. I got everything
looking perfect, brought out the turkey, and said "everything's
ready. Shall we eat?" They looked at the table, with everything laid
out, and one of them said
"Oh, we already ate at
<sister's> house. We're not hungry." They had already eaten?! I
thought *I* was doing dinner! Not only had they eaten, we hadn't been
invited! I covered nicely (I think), said fine, and visited with them for
a little, and then they got up to leave. They'd been there for a grand
total of 45 minutes. I had cooked for ten hours, and not only didn't they
eat, they stayed for less than an hour.
I found out later that my husband knew
they were getting together somewhere else first; he just hadn't bothered
to tell me. I suppose he thought we could eat all the food ourselves (he
was - is! - a very fat man). I felt like the entire family had rejected
me, but I found out even later, that they had not expected me to do
*anything*, and the whole horrible day wasn't their fault. My husband had
taken it upon himself to tell me they were coming for dinner without
inviting any of them. And this, along with many other insults and
thoughtless moments, is why he's my ex-husband. (Though I think my ex's
family could have at least made a little bit of an effort - even if they
weren't expecting to be fed, when I brought out the meal, they should have
realized something was up. We all could at least have had the chance to
apologize for the mix-up, then we could have had a good laugh about it,
and I would have sent food home with them if they wanted. They way it
worked out, I felt unwanted by that family for YEARS. No one ever
mentioned it - I guess in my ex's family, people produce massive meals
just on a whim, and no one thinks anything of it. These days, I throw (and
attend) lovely parties, where everyone has a good time because they love
and care about each other. I am truly blessed in my new marriage and my
dear friends, and we never have to worry about anything like the awful
events re-told on this site. I've told this story to just a few people
over the years, and they have all been amazed that I didn't go ballistic.
Holiday 0925-03
My MIL is a treat to say the least. All
of our Christmas's since we got married have been interesting but this one
took the cake. Up until this point I still tried to make sure we treated
our families as much the same as possible. I was brought up to never
compare presents my brother and I got. I was never jealous of what anyone
else received and was more than gracious to receive anything since I know
I don't deserve anything.
However, this particular year my hub's
family gave our family some amazing gifts. Starting with a bright yellow
TV with a bow on it that had been in my IL's kitchen for years (think
Wonder Years style), it had my kid's names on it. MIL handed out the other
kids' gifts and as soon as my daughter opened the stroller she received my
MIL stated that it stayed at HER house. Not likely, my mood was set. There
were a few other small gifts that I was just amused by but then I got the
shock of my life. The IL's proceeded to tell how they found this great
gift for my BIL. He is the favored child (way too long a story) and they
had found the PERFECT gift for him in an outlet store. It was a bomber
jacket that was worth $300. It only cost $100 and it was the only one the
store had. So, as the fascinating story went, one of them ran home to get
the money since they hadn't brought that much with them while the other
held onto it. Nice story about a nice gift. RIGHT??? RIGHT!! I looked at
my hub and he had this incredible look on his face.... I looked at what he
had received....a box of $5 bullets!! I can understand that you might have
different ideas about how you spend Christmas money, but trying to make it
LOOK like you cared enough when you have BOTH sons in the room would have
helped the Christmas spirit a lot more! I have made the statement to the
IL's to not buy me anything since my parents more than take care of me.
But I wish they would spend what they would have on me, on him! It hasn't
happened yet, poor man got his birthday gift for Christmas last year
because she couldn't get the time to get it to him before. That's ALL he
got, she didn't get him something else!
Holiday 1013-03
I’d been dating "Kevin" for
a couple of years. It was a pretty solid relationship – we hadn’t
discussed anything serious, but he’d come to several of my family’s
gatherings and I’d gone to several of his.
At the time I was working as a
secretary; not exactly a high-powered (nor high-paying) position. The
third year of our relationship I’d had to move out of an apartment I’d
shared with another girl, and the only place I could get was more
expensive – plus I had all my moving expenses. What with one thing and
another, I knew I was going to be unable to afford to fly down to visit my
family for Thanksgiving or Christmas. These are both very big occasions in
my family, and it was going to be my first year celebrating either one of
them alone. I mentioned to Kevin (in August!) that it was going to be a
lonely time for me, whereupon he offered to have his mother invite me to
their home for Thanksgiving dinner. I was a bit startled that he’d
offer, but truly grateful that he thought enough of me to want me to come.
About mid-October, Kevin asked me what
my travel plans were for Thanksgiving. I reminded him that I wasn’t
going to BE traveling for Thanksgiving, since I’d spent all of my spare
cash while moving house. He said "oh, yeah – I was going to have my
mother invite you to dinner." At this point I realized his plans
would probably be news to her, so I told him if it was a problem he didn’t
have to do it. He just smiled and said, "I’m sure it’ll be
fine." OK, no problem…
Now it’s mid-November. At this point
most of my friends are asking me if I have plans, and if not would I like
to come over for Thanksgiving? I have to keep saying "I’m not sure,
but I think I’m having dinner with Kevin’s family." They, one and
all, say, "Well, if not, let us know!" How I wish I’d taken up
with one of them… During all of this I’ve asked Kevin, more than once,
whether or not he’s talked to his mother and if I should be making other
dinner plans. He keeps saying, "I’m sure it’ll be fine."
Okay, now it’s the day before
Thanksgiving, at 4:30 in the afternoon. He calls me at my office and tells
me I’m not invited to his family’s dinner. Meanwhile I’ve turned
down every other invitation I’ve had so I could spend the holiday with
him – and he hadn’t even bothered to try to clear it until then! I’m
not proud to say that I exploded at him – on a shared phone no less. I
was so angry it was all I could do to keep a reasonably civil tongue in my
head. I shamed him into saying he’d pick me up in the afternoon and we’d
spend the evening together with his parents at their house.
Which means that I found myself on
Thanksgiving evening eating leftover turkey and dressing at Kevin’s
mother’s house while she cleared up and washed the dishes and he sat
there making conversation (having eaten already). Needless to say, by the
time Christmas rolled around I celebrated it without even PLANNING to
include him.
Holiday 1111-03
My parents always host a big open house
Christmas party, where we invite the neighbors, friends, family, and work
colleagues to celebrate the Holidays. It is a fairly classy affair, for
the past few years, my friend Sharon and I have put on cocktail dresses
and "waitresses," serving drinks and finger food. We also have a
bar set up in the kitchen, where another one of my friends tends in a tux.
We have more food set up in the dining room where people can refill their
plates. We generally have about 50-60 people at any given time, and
everyone is dressed up nicely. Last year we had two of the most appalling
guests I've ever met.
The first guest, "Beth" was a
professional colleague of my mother. Her son is about 26, addicted to both
alcohol and drugs and is completely incapable of getting a job like an
adult (still lives with his mom). Well, he didn't show up, much to our
relief, but Beth spent most of the evening trying to get my mother to fix
up her son with me. She thinks I'd be a "good influence" on him,
and wouldn't my mom do her a favor and let me date her son (as if I was
even remotely interested in dating this horrible man I had barely met, not
to mention I go to college in another state, so it's not as if I could
even if I had wanted to.) My mother said that I was seeing someone else,
and she didn't think it appropriate to fix up her college-age daughter
with anyone. Beth proceeds to get angry and tell other guests that we are
snobbish and think we're better than her.
Meanwhile, my younger brother, who was
14 at the time, had invited a friend of his to the party, and as we
usually extend invitations to the parents, his mother, "Mary"
showed up as well. The two boys went up to my little brother's room where
several other teenagers were hanging out, while his mother stayed
downstairs to socialize. She immediately went to the dining room and
pulled up a chair to the table (all the chairs had been pulled away from
the table because it was set up like a buffet where people could walk
around and get the various types of food) and begins to eat, trying to
convince everyone who wanders in to pull up a chair and sit down with her.
I refill her wine glass about 4 or 5 times and I decide that I'm going to
avoid filling it for a while as she is evidently quite tipsy at this
point. So I tell Sharon and Ed, my friends who are also filling drinks,
that they should avoid filling Mary's glass as I had filled it quite a
bit. At this point, Sharon looks at me with wide eyes and says that she
had filled the glass at least 3 times herself. Whoops! So in about an hour
and a half, this woman has drunk at least 7 or 8 glasses of wine, with
neither Sharon nor I knowing that she was getting wine from the other. So
now Mary, getting wise to the notion that the flow of wine has stopped,
starts wandering around elsewhere in the house, and proceeds to hit on
every man there between the ages of 18 and 80. My mother walks into the
kitchen to refill a food tray at one point to find Mary drinking from a
BOTTLE of champagne. We assign my older brother to "baby-sit"
Mary and keep her from drinking any more. He gets her a glass of ginger
ale and manages to get her to sit down with him to chat.
So now the party is winding down (it's
about 8 pm, the party invitation was from 3-7--yes this woman was utterly
drunk at someone else's house before 8pm), and most of the guests have
left, but Mary is still there (This is okay with us, because we cannot in
good conscience allow her to drive home completely trashed with her son in
the car). Now Mary is the last guest, and still hasn't made motions
towards leaving even though we have cleaned up and put away everything
from the party (although we'd like to have her gone, we're still happier
to let her stay than drive drunk). At about 11 pm, she announces that
she's going to leave (okay, she might be sober enough now) and take her
son and my little brother to the midnight showing of a movie. My parents
veto this idea, of course, but Mary couldn't understand why they wouldn't
let my brother come out with them. Now may I ask, who takes their 14
year-old son out to a movie at midnight? AND Where do these people come
from?
Holiday 1212-03
I received this invitation via email. A
party in which one is expected to bring special foods, one's own chair and
table, and a $15-20 gift? Strange how unappealing that sounds...
-
- Should you RSVP: YES!
- Should you bring something: YES-- Bring
chairs and tables and pillows!!
- Should it be something Chanukah
appropriate: YES (see below)*
- Can you bring someone, or several
someones, with you: YES, but you must tell me~ and yes, kids are very
appropriate.
- Candle lighting time: shortly after 5.
- *1 Chanukah appropriate list:
- Latkes!
- Sour cream
- Applesauce
- Olive oil
- Menorahs
- Candles
- Derides
- Chocolate coins
- Things to gamble with
- Chanukah music--CD only, tape machine
broken.
- Variations on, and things that go with
the above, lo-carb ones especially
- Sufganiot (jelly donuts. homemade of
course. in fact I saw a recipe on Martha Stewart's website....)
- (I have a not so secret 'thing' for
eggnog...homemade...with alcohol...and lots of nutmeg....)
- Storytelling! Skit-playing! We are
going to attempt to recreate the battle of the Macabees in my living
room! (no realistic ketchup deaths though....)
If I missed you on the first notice I'm sorry. [Note: This was
emailed on Tuesday for a Sunday party.] Would love to see all of
you.
- If you want to participate in the
Goyishe, Yankee swap, bring a gift ($15-$20), wrapped, and hard to tell
what it is!!! Christmas wrapping NOT preferred.
Holiday 1219-03
My uncle could not make it to the big
Thanksgiving dinner, held at my Mother's home every year, a couple of
years ago. However, his second (and current) wife came along anyway.
That's slightly out of the ordinary, as we don't particularly care for
this woman, but we welcomed her anyway. My uncle's wife is a very educated
Mexican woman who speaks several languages besides Spanish and English,
and has a semi-prestigious career in New Orleans. We live an hour away
from New Orleans. You would think she'd have more sense than that which I
am about to relate. She shows up to the dinner with some female relative
of hers, a cousin or something, who is visiting from Mexico. Also along
with them is the cousin's son, about 8 years old. Neither unexpected guest
can speak English. Okay, fine, we have plenty to share, and sharing is
what the holidays are about. So we welcomed them as well, my uncle's wife
translating for us all.
After the dinner, my uncle's wife goes
out to her car, and brings a box back in the house. It is filled with
cheap, ugly, but new brown leather jackets. Then she proceeds to try and
SELL us one of these jackets, telling us that they are from Mexico, good
quality, etc. Obviously, the cousin or whatever had brought them. She even
went so far as to force me to try one of these things on. So I got to
thinking: Perhaps this is a poor relative, who desperately needs the
money. So I asked, how much? She looked at the relative, who literally
looked me up and down, as if calculating how well off I might be, and says
in perfect English, "75.00". WHAT!? My husband and I make less
than $25,000 a year. I just shook my head. Anyway, a few minutes later, my
Mother took my uncle's wife and her two relatives out behind the house, to
show them the lemon trees that my Dad frets over all year. The trees had
some lemons, but most of them were not ripe yet. My mother invited them to
pick some of the ripe ones to take home with them. Well, they commenced to
pick every single lemon off of all 4 trees, even the ones that were still
green. Needless to say, we were all incredulous.
Holiday 1218-03
Page Last Updated May 18, 2007
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