WHEN IT COMES to Christmas, many of us have goldfish-like memories.

Shutterstock / Sonia Ricco Shutterstock / Sonia Ricco / Sonia Ricco

We reflect on previous festive periods with rose-tinted glasses, and sometimes refuse to acknowledge the fact that there have been times when particular Christmases have been little less than hellish.

Christmas; the most wonderful time of the year, right? Wrong.

Luckily, we have a few brave souls among us who were courageous enough to share their worst Yuletide memories, and we chose our absolute favourites.

So, without further ado…

1. Yep, that’ll do it.

Mine is getting so drunk on Christmas Eve 2016 that I got two hours sleep under the Christmas Tree, and was still too drunk to eat dinner and accidentally threw a shoe at my mother that she bought me as a present. Oh, and then I puked outside my Nana’s front door.

2. When you’re the reason for your own downfall.

When I was 16, I asked my mam if I could get my room done up. For Christmas, I got a paintbrush and a duvet. And there was my brother with his new PlayStation and my sister with her fancy presents. And there was me with my paintbrush.

3. When your school lunch trumps your Christmas dinner.

My dad collected the turkey on Christmas Eve, and when he opened it on Christmas morning, it was completely rotten inside. Tragically, my aunty donated a packet of sliced turkey. You know the ones you’d use for sandwiches? Yep, them.

4. Oh, perfect!

Mine was St Stephen’s night a few years ago. I got horrendously drunk and ruined my life. It began with me crying together with my brother’s ex-girlfriend, and ended with me coming onto my friend who rejected me – all while I tried to open his belt in the middle of the pub, and standing beside his bestie who I had proclaimed my love for just the year before.

5. Oh, gorgeous.

Well, there was the year that I came home drunk and drank a glass of turkey grease. And I didn’t know until my mother told me.

6. For the love of…

My family spend Christmas with all our relatives, and one year my auntie decided to put her three kids’ presents in three individual black sacks. When she arrived at our grandmother’s house, she went to the boot of the car to unload the sacks and they weren’t there. She rang her husband, and of course, he had mistaken them for bags of rubbish, and dumped them. There was a Macbook in there. They had to speed back to the dump, and literally go dumpster diving. And miracle of miracles, they FOUND all three binliners, all still intact.

7. And the winner?

When I was about seven or eight years old, my family had a 19-year-old dog. For Christmas, Santa brought the dog some small gifts – a new blanket, a doggy stocking etc. My mam was busy making the Christmas dinner while I was playing with some of my new toys, and I didn’t want the dog to feel left out so while he was lying on his bed on the kitchen floor, I tucked him in with his new blanket and put one of his toys in the bed with him. I resumed playing my Gameboy Advance SP shortly after and was having a great time until my mam suddenly started panicking and ordered me to leave the room. I could tell something was seriously wrong, so I went outside to the hall with my younger sister, while my parents went into the kitchen. Although my parents didn’t tell me because they didn’t want to traumatise me, it turned out that I made the dog overheat by putting him in the blanket while the heating was on and it triggered a seizure. In the days following Christmas he had a few more seizures and we had to get him put down as soon as the vet’s office opened again after Christmas break. So, as an eight-year-old child I inadvertently began the chain of events that caused my dog’s death.

8. Oh, and honourary mention goes to…

Every year for seven years in a row, I got a Christmas card from a classmate with the greeting ‘Merry Christmas, Brain.’ My name is Brian.

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