The very worst for me personally was the first Christmas I spent with my current lady's family. It was also the first time I met them, after a long Christmas Eve flight to a strange country, where I don't speak the language. At all. I was carrying the gifts for the whole family, as she had flown out a week before. Guess who's luggage didn't show up. And who's cellphone's battery was flat. So, no suitcase, no presents, delayed for over an hour in getting out through customs, with no way to contact her. Could the vital first impression be any worse?

Like all guys, I like to have a couple of beers on the plane, to take my mind off my total mistrust of anyone else's driving. And gassy beers, a cheap sandwich, and the low air pressure in the airplane means only one thing - gas. Hurricane force, ear shattering, room clearing gas. Which decided to make it's explosive appearance in a small car with her and her very respectable, dignified and totally non English speaking parents. 

Her father kept muttering something over and over again to himself at every outbreak. My lady got the giggles - badly. She has one of those giggles that infects everyone and starts them laughing. So her mother started to laugh, her father too. I shrank to about an inch tall. She turned to me and explained - "Dad says please stop doing that, he is a very good driver really."

Oddly, we are very good friends now. But her father still winds the window down when I get into the car.

The only oddball holiday story that I have involved me and a friend of mine, who happened to be a girl. Now, we'd been friends for a long time and (this is during college) she went off to spend a year overseas in Great Britain. Well we corresponded and I had the great idea to go visit her during the Christmas break in Boston, before she went back. She was all for it. Excitement ensued. Well, I get to Boston and all of a sudden her family is being all serious with me. I'd met these folks before; lovely people. I couldn't figure out what happened until her father comes to me and says, "you know, we're all looking at you different now." Dumbfounded I went to sleep only to wake up the next morning and realize that she'd told everybody I was her boyfriend. Yes, I walked into her home as her boyfriend and now I was being paraded around to her family as such. Talk about your blower. The situation, not her. We didn't talk for years after that. And only now sporadically. Oh well, Happy Christmas and Merry New Year.

I have no Holiday disaster stories, because I execute the Holidays with the precision of NASA's mission control. Yuletide happiness is nearly guaranteed. 

One Christmas, a few years back, I was stuck in a long weekend at my girlfriend's family home. I hated her family - they were arrogant, aloof and judgmental. But, this only made sense since I hated my girlfriend for the very same reasons. I survived the weekend by drinking heavily, fake smiling like a robot, and chumming it up with Bob -- the brain damaged uncle."So, Bobby, when you're done eating that paper plate, tell me about your space ship again, ok?... Please..."

On New Year's Eve of 1999/2000, I attended a party hosted by the guy I'd been dating. I ended up i the ER with a horrible stomach flu. He ended up sleeping with another girl. As I puked, he went all the way with her. No matter how bad you think your New Year's is going to be, I assure you it will never be worse than the way I spent my turn of the century.