As the temperature goes down and family dinner leftovers pile up, the holiday season passes by with new memories and stories to tell. But truth be told, the holiday season doesn’t always go as planned. Whether it is troublesome pets, unique family members or a broken back, not everyone has a jolly time. These are some stories people shared to spread the holiday spirit.
Breaking for the Holidays
Social Studies teacher Skip Thibault
“It was a couple of Fridays before Christmas, and we were having a party at my house that day. It was people from school that were coming, and I’m all about Christmas. I had icicle lights around the front, and some near the front door had come down. I was standing on a step stool about [a foot] high. It slipped and I landed on my elbow. I knew it was broken as soon as I hit the ground. I couldn’t move it. They had to cut my jacket off me in the hospital. I was in the hospital telling my wife to just tell everyone the party would be a little late. She said, ‘UhÖ There will be no party.”
Underneath the Christmas Tree
Junior Zoe Kaegi
“I’ve had two cats ever since I moved [to Pittsboro] 10 years ago. One cat weighs so much more than she should, but she climbs into the bottom branches [of the tree], and the other cat chases her up there, and then they both end up breaking the branches off the bottom of the tree. For the past couple of years, our tree hasn’t had a bottom foot of its branches. This year, finally, we got a new fake tree, and our cats still manage to bend the wires. I think our Christmas tradition will be just to not have the bottom set of our tree there anymore.”
Oh, Christmas Bat!
Junior Madi Roberts
“When I was two, we brought the Christmas tree home. We have these fake birds that we put in the tree for good luck. I was pointing at something and said, ‘Mom! There’s a bird in the tree!’ She said, ‘Of course there is; it’s fake.’ But I wasn’t pointing to the birds in the tree. There was a bat flying around. I thought it was a bird. It got out of the tree and flew around the house. My sister was a baby, so my mom was really worried it would get into her room. She was chasing the bat around the house with a broom.”
A Festive Fall
Sophomore Sydney McGee
“I woke up on Christmas day and found my amazing American Girl doll pajamas. I was in denial that they were too big, because I really wanted them and I’d been waiting a long time for them, but wore them anyway. I walked downstairs to show my mom after I put them on. However, I slipped down the stairs, hit a baby gate and fell down another two stairs. We had to go to urgent care. I ended up bruising and fracturing a small part of my tailbone. It wasn’t that bad, but it hurt for a good couple of months.”
Merry Brick-mas!
Senior Lily Parsons
“My uncle Tommy always jokes about how he’s going to get the biggest present on Christmas. So every single year, someone gives him this huge box. When he opens it, there’s another box, and then another box. In that box, there is newspaper and then a brick. Every year, he gets a big box that ends up being a ball of newspaper or a brick. He is like, ‘I got the biggest present!’ but he doesn’t.”
– By Betty Her