h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've just seen Z's thread asking for Christmas memories, so here's my best/worst/first/last Christmases.

First one I can properly remember is when I was 5 or 6 and being unable to sleep, getting panicked Father Christmas wouldn't visit because I wasn't asleep. My mum ended up running out of patience and being honest with me, making me the first one of my siblings to find out. Found out about the tooth fairy at the same time.

Worst was Christmas 2006 - the last one I spent with my aunt: after graduating from Uni I'd decided to try reconciliation with my mum and older brother and that included spending Christmas together as a family. Bad enough on its own, since the reconciliation was pretty much doomed to fail, but we had the extra problems of my teenage sister being pregnant, me failing the PGCE down in Exeter/Cornwall and being in the middle of breaking up with my boyfriend. Fairly inevitably, on Christmas Eve a row kicked off between myself, my mum and my elder brother. Despite promising not to, my mum had got roaringly drunk (it turns out you can't trust an alcoholic not to drink - who knew?) and starting making nasty comments about my boyfriend and gay folk in general and my elder brother decided to take a swing at me which resulted in him being thrown across the room and into the kitchen (things had changed since the last time he'd tried to knock me about).

End result was I grabbed my stuff, chucked it into my rucksack, swing my leg over my bike and rode from Liverpool to Manchester. Got to the boyfriends (empty - he was with his folks) house just after 1am on Christmas Day, went to bed and didn't resurface until late that evening. That Christmas Eve was the last time I had any contact with my mum or elder brother and the last time I spent Christmas with my family.

Last Christmas was pretty fun: since 2006 I've spent most Christmases on my own, with only a couple of exceptions, but last year was the first time I enjoyed it. Previously I'd gone all out to avoid Christmas because of the bad memories (December in general is/was a bad time for me: I was put into care in December when I was a teenager, a result of my elder brother trying to kill me) and I was always deeply miserable and lonely. Last year I did it differently: I planned ahead and made sure I had some stuff to do. Made my favourite food for Christmas dinner and tried to make it something I enjoyed rather than something I thought I should be doing and it worked.

Best Christmas, without a doubt, was 3 years ago with my two best friends. I'd broken my wrist slipping on ice a few days earlier and they decided I couldn't possibly be alone and had me over. For the first time in my life I had a properly white Christmas, with deep snow all over. We took the dog out for a long walk in the snow, which was wonderful, and then spent the afternoon in the pub playing board games whilst Christmas dinner was being cooked. Then it was dinner, Doctor Who (which sucked that year but you can't have everything) and general merriment. My mate invented a festive cocktail so my memory after dinner is somewhat hazy.

This year I'm off to the foster folks, which will be interesting. Really quite looking forward to it, which isn't something I say about Christmas very often.

Thank you,
I hope this Christmas is a nice one for you. I hope it is not too wrong to be ever so slightly relieved that other families also have difficult Christmases.

I can't find anything about the December Create, certainly not on U14992038. Where do I go?

Sorry, TC. Got access problems to the Create page atm. There's the Create tab on the Front Page which gives a summery. But basically, the theme is Christmas memories/ anecdotes, either as part of Z's thread or in the Post.

Those experiences pretty much run the gamut of Christmas experiences, there HI. I hope this one's a good one for you too.

Thought I'd add a post-script for this Christmas. It was bloody awesome. Christmas with the foster folks was wonderful, really chilled out with lots of great food, wine and laughter.

Particular highlights were hilarity with my foster folks cats, several bottles of a very nice red with no hangover and my foster dad calling me 'son'. The complete absence of hassle was nice too - getting there and back couldn't have been any easier.

Shame the weather was so rubbish.

I'm glad you had a wonderful time. You deserve it. I hope 2013's will be as cheerful for you.

Sounds as though you had a great Christmas HI.