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A lot of anticipation and work go into creating the perfect holiday, so when those sugar plum fairy dreams get hijacked by a disaster, it’s no fun—but it is memorable. Read on to hear about a few of those unforgettable stories that shortchanged Christmas—but live on in friend and family lore.Lucas Robinson, CMO of Crediful, a personal finance site.

Cheetah spots

One of the worst Christmases that we had as a family was a couple of years ago. We were driving over to our family’s house when they realized the turkey had not been defrosted at all. They thought the best thing to do was to blowtorch the turkey to defrost it and cook it at the same time. By the time they were done with it, it looked like it had cheetah spots instead of looking like a cooked turkey. We didn’t have a turkey that year, of course, and ended up having sandwiches for our lunch. We can laugh about it now, and usually, we give the family a call to defrost the turkey the day before.

An earthquake

I spent Christmas with a lot of my family and friends one year. Most of us hadn’t seen each other for so long, we were feeling sentimental and wanted to make up for all the time we lost. We decided to have as much fun as possible. While a lot of people were dancing, an earthquake happened that made almost everyone panic. When it passed, and most of us were scared, one friend said, “Was it an earthquake? I thought we just danced too hard.”Simon Elkjær, Chief Marketing Officer of avXperten, home to Denmark’s most affordable electronics.Emily Deaton, Financial Journalist at Let Me Bank.

At Christmas

We usually have someone go to the hospital on the day of Christmas, which is always something we dread as the day gets closer. One Christmas, we were all sitting down in the evening after a wonderful day, and out of nowhere one of the younger children was howling in pain. We had absolutely no idea what was wrong, so we went to the hospital. It turns out they were panicking, and the only way they could express it was screaming. They are now more relaxed at Christmas, and we hope that this year will be different.

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