Several years ago my family and I had the most awkward Christmas dinner. It was the year that my grandparents decided they would treat us all to a special dinner at one of their favorite restaurants.
When we arrived at the restaurant, it was packed. Completely busy, but we weren’t worried. My grandpa had made a very special reservation several days prior to have a private room for the whole family to dine in. Our confidence in the reservation was short lived as we found out the staff had made a mistake and had already given the room to another party. So instead of our nice private room, they put a bunch of tables together and stuck us in the bar. Fabulous.
So after an hour or so passes, we get our meals and we’re eating and enjoying our time. Suddenly, an old man, who was sitting in the booth behind us, falls out of his seat onto my brother, passed out. Now, the old man is on the ground, not breathing and his wife is hysterically crying (which also made my cousin cry). My aunt decides this guy needs some sort of help (he was choking) and so she socks him in the stomach! A nurse, who was sitting at the bar, yells at my aunt, runs over, pushes her out of the way and starts doing CPR and the Heilmlich maneuver. Next thing I know, paramedics rush past me, revive the old man, and roll him out on a gurney…all while we’re eating dinner.
That was enough drama for Christmas dinner, right? Probably not.  As we’re all trying to calm each other down and get back to enjoying dinner, the restaurant keeps getting more and more crowded by the minute. Apparently there was no more room to sit in the waiting area, so this strange old man decides to sit down right next to me on the booth/bench thing I was on. I was totally creeped out..and for a long time none of my family even noticed this old man sitting right next to me at our table. Finally, my grandpa saw the guy and says to him, ” I don’t think you’ve met my granddaughter, her name is Emily.” It was totally awkward. After awhile, the man left and I thought that had to be the end of our crazy night. Nope.
There were crowds and crowds of people waiting to eat. What made it worse was that the service was completely slow. My cousin didn’t even get her meal until everyone else was eating dessert. Anywho, as my family was trying to finish up dinner and dessert, an angry old man starts pacing throughout the restaurant, yelling at each table, “YOU EAT AND YOU LEAVE!” We loved that. What a merry Christmas!

Emily – CA

One Christmas a friend of mine invited me to a Christmas party with a bunch of his friends, none of which I knew. He told me (and I quote), “We’re having a naughty Santa gift exchange, so bring something to give.” I’d never heard someone use that term before, but being a person of sub-par to average intelligence, I assumed that meant a white elephant gift exchange and didn’t ask any questions. No sweat. Just a brief perusal of my parents’ basement will bring me what I need. I found a statue of a cat laying down that was about a foot long. The cat was multi-colored with velvet like stuff on it to make it soft. In other words, it was really tacky, ugly and undesirable. I think my Grandma bought it at a thrift store. Anyways, I wrapped that as my gift. Upon arrival to the party, I set it lovingly beneath the bows of the Christmas tree and chuckled to myself at its inherently white elephant nature. The time came for us to open the gifts. Sweet. The first gift opened was a…..(drumroll) nice picture frame. Second gift…..(drumroll) nice set of Yankee candles. Third gift…..(drumroll)…………a…..a gross thrift store/basement stored/bizarre looking/tacky statue of a cat? That jerk totally lied to me! That was no “naughty Santa” or whatever the heck you want to call it gift exchange! I sat there completely degraded and humiliated in front of a bunch of strangers. The guy who opened the gift was very gracious though. I tried to explain myself, but he just kept on going on about how it was ok and he could put it on his porch or something woefully ridiculous like that. Whatever, man. Awkward!