Printable View
Someone mentioned a power outage on Christmas Day which resulted in Christmas dinner being steaks cooked on the outside BBQ - and it has become a tradition.
What is the 'strangest' Christmas you've had?
------------------
LadyFisher, Publisher of
FAOL
Being in food service, I have often had to work on Christmas.
You would be amazed how many people think Christmas is a good day to gamble (and eat) at a casino.
It's a very busy day and my least favorite day of the year to work.
No heat. Frozen pipes. Broken pipes.
Plumber's holiday rate.
Plumbing apprenticeship...priceless.
------------------
Tom
Well, we were beating into some pretty heavy
seas in a 97 foot seagoing tugboat. We were
making good all of 3 or 4 knots on a course
for Cartahegna, Columbia. We had a big roro (roll on, roll off) barge on a long wire hawser. The huge covered barge would disappear beneath the waves. Shortly after
putting the bird in the oven, we took a big
roll and it popped out of the oven, shot
across the galley, and put a dent in the
steel bulkhead.*G* Finally got it all back
together, big springs in the oven holding
the roasting pan and bungies on the oven
door. All was ready at the appointed time
for dinner, complete with mashed potatoes,
gravy, string bean casarole, cranberries,
and hot rolls.*G* It was a challenge, but
was well received by the crew. Though
neither required, nor expected, turned out
everyone had brought aboard gifts for
all of their shipmates. The towing
company gave us a decent Christmas bonus
and danged if the outfit we were hauling for
didn't give us one too.*G* We all got to
talk to our families that evening on the
sat phone. Turned out to be a pretty good
Christmas in spite of the weather. Warm
regards, Jim
Nothing too strange. However I have rec'd some strange gifts on Christmas. One year (my 16th) my Mom gave be a siphon hose and then fast forward to last year: my wife gave me a large jar of bungee cords. Hey I'm not complaining though http://www.flyanglersonline.com/bb/biggrin.gif
1967
That was the year my brother died 15 days before Christmas. It was a heart attack/car wreck. I came home from the Army to find my family walking on egg shells every time they tried to talk to one another. But, by the grace of God, somehow we all wound up closer than ever that year. We all still miss my brother Mitch, and it was a very somber Christmas. But by the time I left to go back to the Army, we were all hugging each other and speaking more freely. I went back to the Army knowing that my family realized that what must pass, must pass. God's love for us is so generous it can't be understood. I'm not writing this to bring everyone down. I just want us all to know that it's going to be alright. God said so, so believe it.
Merry Christmas. I really mean that.
------------------
Life, is the time He gave you to determine where you want to spend eternity.
----------
Lotech Joe
Maybe not the strangest but the most hungover!! The first year I was married, it was tradition the roast a whole lamb on a spit by an open fire on Christmas Eve. Could get rather cold in Farson Wyo. except for windbreaks and the fire. The wife said all the relatives and neighbors would stop by. And they did!! She forgot to tell me that most would bring a bottle of something,, and crack the seal for a taste near the fire. Father in law just laughed, maybe that was when he nicknamed me Blizzard!! It snowed hard that day, but I really don't remember!
Haven't done a lamb at the ranch on Christmas Eve since he passed away several years ago.
Have a Happy Christmas and enjoy the relatives and kids, just was told I get to work on Christmas day, oh well, not leaving for San Francisco until Monday anyway, triple time looks good for the bills, especially after all the granddaughter gets..and the only ones home are the wife, and the son who gets to work also.
Peace and Joy to All!!!
------------------
Wyo-blizzard aka Bloody Tom Bonney
[This message has been edited by Byron Zuehlsdorff (edited 21 December 2005).]
My late shooting partner and his wife used to invite us over for every Christmas before we moved. 3 years ago she was peeling potatoes and decided to put the wad of peels down the disposal. The peels made it about 30 feet before lodging firmly in the pipe. While everyone was dressed festively and drinking, Bill and I spent all night with wrenches and snakes trying to get the potato plug out, to no avail. We ended up doing dishes with a garden hose while laughing about the situation. Best Christmas Ever. http://www.flyanglersonline.com/bb/smile.gif
had a lovely December 24th snowfall, the kind that floats down softly. ChristmasDay we had a viscious wind tht blew all of the snow from some areas and the blew dirt all over the areas that still had snow. We called it our black Christmas. It was ugly.
92Esquire,
I've run into the same kind of problem. My plug was with corn shucks. What a knot! I found that if I put a stopper in the adjacent sink, wrapped a wet dish wrag around the perimeter of the primary drain, and stuffed the nozzle of a Shop-Vac into the primary drain, the suction worked bettter than a snake. Suction seemed to back the plug out better than trying to push it into something that already has it jammed up tight. Try it the next time fins and fish skin have you stopped up. There is the tie in to fishing. I had to stretch, but I found one.
------------------
Life, is the time He gave you to determine where you want to spend eternity.
----------
Lotech Joe
Being stuck in Korea in the late '60's....drafted of course. Christmas Eve, standing in my empty quonset hut, alone, at midnight, ....staring out the window watching the snow come down....ground and street covered with snow and packed snow on the street. Listening to "I'll Be Home For Christmas" and being homsick knowing dad was ill. Watching the stars, and the drunk GI's returning from the on base bar, staggering, slipping and falling down. Never saw my father alive again. Dischared in the spring, returned home, bought a house when I was still single....and took care of my mom.
Gem
Yes Nighthawk, also a veteran of a foreign war and also proud of it.
Christmas 1977. First one away from my family. I was in Germany. I worked (voluntarily) 3rd shift for a holiday schedule. That meant I worked from 11PM-7AM. I got back to my room and slept from 8 in the morning to 10 that night. Got up in time to shower and shave and head back to work. One Christmas I wish I did something to remember.
Mike
------------------
There is no greater fan of flyfishing than the worm.
Patrick McManus
1966, Starting my 2d tour in Viet Nam. Christmas Eve the brass had a Psy-Ops plane fly over blasting Christmas Carols out over the loudspeakers they usually used to try talking the VC into surrendering. That overflight only lasted a few minutes into the dark of night as he was almost shot down by "Friendly Fire".
REE
I was stationed at Canadian Coast Guard station Spring Island Loran (VAE2) in the 1960's . There were 11 people on the station . We had been experiencing a Southeast gale for 3 days . The seas were too big to allow anyone to go to the big city Koyoquot (150 people ) for the mail and we were unable to get the Big Sears order we knew was there plus our liquor order had arrived at the post office . We were looking at a bleak Christmas .
On the day before Christmas the CCG Icebreaker Camcell arrived off the island and anchored just off our dock . The Captain invited us all aboard for Christmas dinner and sent the Helicopter to Koyoquot for the Christmas mail and presents .
On an isolated station an event like this was huge .
It Helped keep us from going totally nuts . (In my case it didn't quite work , but thats another story )
When you reach my age, you're bound to have many memories of various Christmases. Two stand out for me, one when I was 17 (lived on a farm in Northern Illinois) and I spent Christmas Eve at my girlfriend's house. The blizzard was so bad that I ended up stuck in a snowdrift about 1 mile from my house and couldn't get out of the car until the snowplow came through Christmas morning. (I've often wondered what would have happened if the County plow hadn't have come by.
The other standout: 1954 in Korea...
However, the good news is that there were 65 other great Christmases. (I don't remember any before I was 5.)
Merry Christmas to all.
------------------
There's snow on the roof but the fire still burns in the oven.
[This message has been edited by Silvertop2 (edited 22 December 2005).]
Christmas 1967.....I had extended my VietNam tour & was home for a 30 day leave...with all the "garbage" I saw at home (folks actually BELIEVING the bullcrap they read/saw in & on the news, I really found myself regretting missing the Bob Hope show back in Nam...4th Infantry Division. No matter your view of that war/police action, Bob Hope did more for the morale of the American Troops than ANY other person or entity. He willingly walked "in harms' way". GOD BLESS the man...IMHO, no greater hero has ever lived!
Sorry I missed your show, Bob, but one day, we WILL meet!
Mike
------------------
This site's about sharing!
I fell a little over twenty feet off a cliff on Christmas Day 1979. Although I was sore all over, the only serious damage was to my left elbow. I still have a nice big scar and I lost the ability to turn my hand palm up. The funny thing is that I probably would not have met my wife of 24 years had I not slowed down a bit for a few weeks after the operation. You never know how things will turn out.
Jtaylor,
Are you saying you "fell head over heels in love"????
Mike
------------------
This site's about sharing!
I'll bet he ended up enjoying the trip.
------------------
There's snow on the roof but the fire still burns in the oven.
Good one ohiotuber. I guess that's a pretty accurate description of the situation.
1962, Pomona, California. I was 4 years old. My father had his heel crushed in between some pipes at work three months before. The company's insurance didn't want to pay. He wasn't working. We were loosing everything.
My dad went out in the car on Christmas eve and found a Christmas tree for 50 cents at 9 oclock at night. He brought it home and my mom and dad decorated it with the Christmas cards we got from folks.
When we woke up Christmas morning, we three kids all opened our presents. Each of us got a sweater that my mom had knitted. These had been wrapped in the Sunday comics. We sat on orange crates (our furniture had been reposessed) and sang Christmas carols.
Looking back, I realized that the sweaters were knitted out of yarn that my mother had unraveled from two other sweaters. One of hers and my dad's favorite old fisherman's knit.
Its the Christmas that taught me the meaning of what Christmas is supposed to be and the one that I always compare every Christmas too. No other has matched it.
Frank Reid
My story doesn't compare to all the Christmas stories from our dear veterans, but it was one that sticks out in my mind. I was about 8 years old and my sister was about 5. About 2 AM the smoke alarm in the house started going off. It did what it was supposed to and woke all of us up. My parents and grandparents searched the house to see if there was actually a fire, but discovered that the batteries were going dead. Well, after that, there was no going back to sleep for my sister and I. We all ended up opening presents at about 3:00 in the morning!! That was the longest Christmas day!! As I look back on it now, my parents and grandparents were so tired the rest of the day!!
Ok not the strangest but to me the funniest.
To set the stage My wife is the soundest sleeper I've ever met she sleeps through alarm clocks,smoke detectors,telephone next to the bed etc.well a couple of years ago I woke up to the sound of wrapping paper being shredded and squeals of delight from my then 5 yr.old son I nudged my wife awake and told her the kids were opening presents,man she was out of bed like a shot.almost all of their presents were open.It turns out they had asked her if they could open them and in her coma she refers to as sleep she had said sure go ahead.Christmas is very important to my wife with a very well established protocol for opening presents,photos ooh and ahhing so to this day she can not understand why I was rolling on the floor laughing and why I wasn't upset about the whole incident
At the ex inlaws for X-mas day. Nice fire going in the fire place as x-mas songs are playing. The inlaws forgot to clean the chimney that year. The fire department had to take it down because the fire within the chimney could not be put out any other way. A house full of smoke while we at our breakfast that morning but at least the house was saved.
In my youth we spent many a xmas days out on two diffrent boats one a 26 ft Bayliner and the other in later years a 28 ft Bayliner. We would spend X-mas at places like Longbranch WA and other places with not much for us kids to do but fish in the rain and cold and once or twice the snow. Mom always had to cook X-mas dinner on the boat and got pretty darn good cooking in that little oven a full X-mas dinner for four. Often the wind and cold would get kind of bad and at times even us kids were given hot buttered rum to help warm us up. Though we never got more then one cup each. By the way I spent many a Thankgiving this way to. Maybe that why to this day I often fish while the rivers are nice and open on the holidays and the family gets together on a diffrent day. This years its Saturday with fishing for me on Sunday.
Dad passed away from a sudden heart attack one week before Christmas in 1977. Traveled about 500 miles home to New England with wife and two boys ages 16 and 13. Spent the week getting mom squared away, funeral arrangements, etc. Had to be back at work at the end of a week;so, had to leave to start home on Christmas morn. Spent Christmas day eating cold egg salad sandwiches etc, in the middle of a snowstorm, parked in a closed Sunoco gas station, somewhere off Interstate 88 halfway between Albany, NY and Binghamton, NY. Not the best obviously; but, qualifies for the strangest!
There have been so many,like the time my first wife and I thawed the turkey on our back porch and went to retrieve it early Christmas morning for our first Christmas with her parents. We opened the bag and nothing was left. Neighborhood cats had cleaned every last scrap of meat off the carcass. A Christmas in Dubuque with a bunch of us newspaper bachelors was precious. But my first Christmas away from home while I was in the Army was incredible. About a month before I had met a Romanian girl who had come to Ft. Sheridan to meet another soldier who stood her up. We played some pool and just talked and got acquainted, and I walked her back to the train station and waited with her for her train. The weekend before Christmas she invited me to Chicago where she played tour guide and gave me a sweet kiss as I boarded the train back to the fort. That week she called and invited me to her family's home for Christmas. I traversed all of Chicago down to Stickney, nervously asking any and all talkative passengers en route if I was on the right bus, and where I had to get off, all of that, to where they lived and incredibly somehow met up with her. Christmas Eve and day I learned that a Romanian Christmas was a whole 180 from the way we had celebrated Christmas back on our family farm. Boistrous. Wall to wall food and cheer. Round after round of laughter. So many toasts I thought I'd die. The year was 1961 and served as my introduction into the beauty of other cultures -- which opened a whole new coursity about people, cultures and ways of living. For the past 16 years I have worked as a coordinator for an exchange student organization in my spare time, which I think started that day at Sandy Strupek's family in south Chicago. JGW
Oh my, let's see, I was 16 years old and early Christmas morning I walked over to my step-brothers house until my parents got up. His wife was preparing to host the dinner and she took a break and poured herself and my step-brother a tall glass of rum. While they were in the livingroom, I thought I would have a glass also. I acted manly and drank it right down and poured another. No effect, tasted good! I think I had another, couldn't be sure. After some time, I headed back to the door and said goodbye and started walking home. I made it about 100 yards and passed out in the snow. I don't know how long I layed there, but I never touched rum again in my life. I couldn't even tell you what I got for Christmas that year.
Tyflyer
Christmas Eve day about fifteen years ago.
With a turbine or two off line, the power company used "rolling blackouts" of complete grids to ration the available electricity.
However, no one took into account that the 40, 50 & 60+ year old neighborhoods had 40, 50 and 60+ year old transformers. Since none of the homeowners turned off their thermostats, once power was turned back on to those "old" grids, the surge was WAY too much and the transformers couldn't take it. Sounded a lot like New Year's Eve not Christmas Eve.
The water bed's heat kept my wife and kids warm for a while but that eventually cooled down.
Needless to say we packed up the presents and stockings and spent the night at a friends house who lived across the street from a fire station.
Yep, if you were lucky enough to live in a grid that contained a hospital, fire department or police department your power wasn't turned off at all.
The year we bought our old new house...1993~
The 3-story Pennsylvania bank house was built in 1845...and nothing much had been done since! We knew it needed a "little" work; but...
On Christmas Day we were standing in the kitchen crawl space looking all the way up to the roof trusses. I don't remember what we had for Christmas dinner; but, I know it was cooked on a Coleman stove. And we washed the dishes in the bathtub...
Once on a trip to the Orient, I left Dec 24 and crossed the International dateline at Midnight which meant I went from Dec 24 directly to Dec 26 and totally missed Christmas.