Suzanne Groenewold: Christmas Eve trip to the ER right before company arrived. Boys were playing hockey on the back deck, and the big boys checked the little one into the house. Stitches to the head of the 7-year-old.
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Nancy Gates Gauthier: My back went out on a Christmas Eve, while cleaning litter boxes!
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Alexander B. Potter: Our tree always stood in a corner. We have a very large family, so the large number of presents under the tree were always packed all the way around - right up to the trunk and into the far back corner. One of my sisters was leaning into the tree and reaching around it, selecting a present from the back. There was a large bottom branch blocking her. She thought she'd “just lift it up out of the way.”
Which she did. Grabbing hold and lifting it straight up, immediately turning the tree over completely. (There was no warning... no toppling, no wavering, no swaying... no catching that sucker. It was one of the largest branches right at the bottom so it just turned the tree over flat.)
At the time, the loss of some old, fragile, heirloom-ish ornaments and the drenching of some gifts with sugar water from the tree stand and the huge amounts of pine needles now all over everything was not so amusing. But over the years, my sister's completely stunned look when she stood up - and her surprised statement of “I didn't think about the limb being connected to the trunk” - have become the things we remember.
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Robin Rieske: My first time hosting Thanksgiving, I put the turkey in the oven in one of those cooking bags. It caught on fire and, when I pulled out the oven tray, it fell back into the oven, so I grabbed the bird by both legs, and it splayed open. We tried to tie the legs back, but it was too late.
Then, while preparing to defrost something in the microwave, I dropped the frozen object on a stack of dishes and broke most of them.
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Jeff Potter (your editor): The first Christmas after my wife Susi and I purchased our house, we invited my family over for our first Christmas party. I prepared some spanakopita (filo-dough-and-spinach pastries) in advance and put a couple of trays of them into our freezer in the cellar.
On the night of the party, with my parents, brothers, uncles, and various other people all having arrived, I went down to get the spanakopita and was stunned to see about a foot of water in our basement and water gushing in through the foundation.
My parents convinced me that I should call the fire department, and two volunteer firefighters stomped back and forth through the party, gamely pulling hoses and gear back and forth through the kitchen, the living room, and the dining room on their way to and from the cellar.
It was stressful beyond measure, but these guys saved our furnace and appliances, and everyone else still seemingly had fun. And the spanakopita was delicious.
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Dot Lenhart: After a very filling Thanksgiving dinner, we all moved to the living room to collapse into an overfed stupor. All the food was left on the table. After about an hour, I went into the kitchen for a glass of water to find the back end of our cat sticking out of the turkey cavity!
Another time, we had a large Christmas tree, all decorated, and a Maine Coon kitten. One morning, at around 3 a.m., I was awakened by a mighty crash. The tree was on the floor, many ornaments broken, and said kitten nowhere to be found. I set it upright as best I could and swept up the broken glass.
The next day, I caught him climbing up the tree again, but I caught it before it fell. I then tied the tree to the wall with clothesline, and did the same for several years after.
The same cat used to swipe at the ornaments on the lower branches as he walked by, and occasionally one would break. That's when I learned to put unbreakable ornaments at the bottom of the tree. I sure miss Mikey!
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Janet Athens: When I was in my 20s, my mother gave me a woven pullover vest. This detail is important, because there was no stretch in the vest at all. She had measured the chest and was sure it was going to fit me.
She told me to try it on, and I got stuck in it halfway through. It would not pull down all the way. She kept insisting it would fit, and amid all the family laughter, tried to pull it down into position on my body.
At that point, I was a bit like a dog in a funnel collar from the vet. I could not see anything, so I was having trouble balancing as she tugged and tugged, still sure that it would fit.
My arms were stuck over my head and completely useless. Meanwhile, my brother-in-law was taking photo after photo of this conundrum, which made the effort to get the vest on or off even funnier.
Someone finally figured out that I needed help to get it off, and helped me out of it. My mother still insisted it should have fit, even after it did not.
Whenever a family member brings this story up, we laugh uproariously at the bad fit and my mother's determination in the face of impossibility.