What happens when your holidays don’t go as planned? Send us your Christmas bloopers.
Recently, I’ve been spending time with old home movies, converting VHS tapes to digital files, preserving holiday memories in a shareable way. And one tradition in my house growing up in Fort Mill was lining up at the top of the stairs on Christmas morning, oldest to youngest, while Dad filmed us heading down to see what joys Santa had to bring.
But wait — one year, I let my siblings go first, video evidence shows. I’m the oldest, and there’s no way I’d let that fly out of the kindness of my heart. I also seemed very unenthusiastic about Santa’s arrival compared to other years. Turns out, there was a good reason, which my sister kindly explained later in a video monologue she called “explanation for why Melissa was in a bad mood.”
Picture this: I was 15 years old, and my parents decided Christmas break was the perfect time to schedule my wisdom teeth extraction. The surgery turned out to be more complicated (read: painful) than planned, and this resulted in a new nickname (Gretzky) and a few additional days in bed. Apparently, I was out of it enough on Christmas Day to agree to go last down the stairs, a power position the eldest child does not give up easily.
It’s a small thing, but it brought a smile to my face to see. It also reminded me of my mom serving me Instant Breakfasts, then my brother bringing me a bagel in bed once I’d graduated to soft foods. Of my sister stopping in to check on me (we were not yet friends, so this was special). Of discovering three-way-calling while bored, realizing if I tied up both our home phone line and my dad’s business line, I could talk to two friends at once. Ah, the ‘90s.
Send us your holiday bloopers
All that leads me to ask a question of you: What are some holiday memories of yours that include things not going as planned but ended up being a great memory regardless? Did a power outage lead to a holiday meal at Denny’s? Or one year were you snowed in or rained in (more likely in Charlotte), and making the best of it turned out to be something great?
We want to hear your holiday bloopers, whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or another holiday. If they are tender, emotional or downright funny, send us your stories to charlottefive@charlottefive.com.
Happy holidays!
