We had no traditional speaker for our November 16, 2023, meeting. Instead, Sunrisers shared stories of holidays that “went off the rails.” Mark Campbell was our moderator. Mark organized us into groups and we shared stories of “holidays from hell.” After our group meetings each group selected the most memorable (forgettable?) holiday stories with the group. Some of these incredible and almost unbelievable holiday stories follow below.

Paul shared a story about what happened when he and his ex-wife, who were travelling the world, spent Christmas in Christchurch, New Zealand. They were staying at a bed and breakfast and were bored during the Christmas dinner; so bored they decided to go into town for a meal. Unfortunately, Christchurch closes down early on Christmas day and the only place to eat was the local game arcade, which served only hot dogs. They ate on the curb outside, but Paul’s hot dog exploded with flying mustard when he took his first bite. Not his best Christmas.

Dave’s family loved to decorate their home on Christmas. On one fateful Christmas holiday Dave got knocked off the roof of his home putting ornaments on the tree. Dave says he suffered no serious injuries; Shauna did not comment. Stacy’s parents were Jewish and did not generally decorate for Christmas. One year, however, Stacy’s mom got them a 2’ “Hanukkah tree”, but also came home with a live spider monkey she picked up from a random guy at a gas station. It looked cute but was a disaster. The monkey opened its cage, ran out, pooped on the drapes, and knocked down the tree! The monkey was not invited to stay with Stacy’s family.

Mary’s family lost all their Christmas decorations in tornadoes in Illinois one year. Using good old fashioned Hallmark-style ingenuity, they fashioned doves and snowflakes from typing paper as ornaments. Randy (who notably told this story while still suffering from a 2023 skiing accident) went skiing one holiday while in college at Mammoth Mountain in So Cal with family friends, the Quigleys. Two of the Quigleys were expert skiers and invited Randy to race down one of the most difficult slopes. Randy missed a turn and ran into a tree at full speed, blowing out his knee in the process. Strangely, this incident did not dissuade Randy from his lifelong love of skiing.

Rich’s story may have been the most unusual of the Christmas-from-hell stories (aside from Stacy’s spider monkey story). One Christmas vacation while he was a youngster, Rich and his buddies spent their time building and driving go-carts. Rich was having an especially great day driving his cart until he ran out of gas. He came up with the idea of siphoning gas from his family Volkswagen, but with no plastic pipe/tube available, he needed to devise a substitute delivery mechanism. Being a normally ingenious guy, even as a kid, he came up with the idea of using a bicycle handle (which is hollow) to use as a siphon (note – this is actually hard to imagine). Rich acknowledges that he had more than the usual mouthful of leaded gas during the siphon process but thought nothing of it and continued his joyful go-carting that afternoon. It came back to haunt him that evening at a holiday service. Fortunately, the bathroom was close by.

Many thanks to all the Sunrisers who came up with these regrettable and memorable whoppers. And thank you to Mark Campbell, who came up with this idea. Let’s just hope that none of us suffer with any similar stories from this years’ holidays!

On a regular basis, our resident photo pro Warren Smith, submits pictures of what is going on at the weekly meetings. You can always find the most recent pictures at the websites photo journal called "Meeting Sighting" Please note that all the meeting photos for the entire Rotary year are at this location with the most recent on the last page.

Thanks for all the great pictures Warren! Link to Meeting Sightings. The most recent are on the last page!