Yeah. The first five random people she happened to meet were not instant chums? A socially awkward situation didn’t pan out? That’s not a bad Christmas, that’s an important learning experience, even for the most Hughesian introvert.
That seemingly having been the end of her social exploration suggests she learned the wrong thing.
I’m suspecting the story continues on the next page. Plus its only the first salvo in a series of potentially five increasingly more depressing stories.
I spent last Christmas in a rehab hospital, having broken my leg a few icy days earlier. Rest of my family was gathering 350 miles away as was our yearly custom. Meanwhile I was getting an open wound on my ankle picked at and dressed 2x/day, and 5 shots a day. Christmas dinner was dry chicken breast, limp green beans and yellow jello. I was pretty lonely.
I had for the last few years grown weary of decorations and carols and the ilk. I got none of that last year. This year, I welcome that stuff with open arms. Merry Christmas, all!
Absence really does make the heart grow fonder. It does sound like, even if it sucked completely in its own right, that shitty Christmas rekindled your ability to enjoy the holiday. So… yay?
The “worst” Christmas I’ve had wasn’t that bad at all. One friend wanted a driving buddy down to San Francisco, and I had a college friend there I thought it’d be neat to visit. It went fine aside from being on a bit of short notice and I forgot how much I hate being a guest. The buddy’s parents were the “oh no don’t get up we’ll run around doing everything for you” (but not passive-aggressively, sincere) type that drives me a bit nutty, I didn’t really click with them and the college buddy dynamic I expected to be back with my friend didn’t work in his parents’ house. It was nice enough, but it wasn’t the awesome idea it had seemed like when I came up with it.
Now if we expand to *other* holidays, then I can nominate the Thanksgiving where my friend invited me to her home, her entire extended family had been mistakenly informed by an overzealous mother that we were dating, one of their cats threw up on me the first night there (waking up covered in cat vomit is not fun), and I spent the whole week feeling like a seventeenth wheel in a too-crowded house.
Life lesson. What happens at school stays at school :)
When visiting other people for a short time be gracious and let them do whatever it is they want, such as catering to your every need. Just say thank you, and hit the bar on the way out.
I love visiting my parents, they always have plenty of chores to keep me busy. The best part is that as they get older and feebler there are more things for me to do.
Though i don’t think any of my Christmases have really been personally bad yet. all the awful seems to happen to other people around me, still affecting me, but not enough that I can really complain.
If we are doing that, I want to join! I was studying for an exam by my lonesome and trying to convince myself that working for Christmas night wasn’t at all depressing, when the accumulated snow on my roof broke it. I spent the rest of the night frantically putting buckets under leaks and unsuccesfully trying to get in touch with my owner.
Well… my family are good people, and we’re all on good terms, but we’ve also all spread out to live in different cities after reaching adulthood, as did both my parents’ families of origin, plus my parents themselves divorced, so they relocated too. Finally the young adult generation (including myself) works desperate hours (with extreme difficulty booking off time) to meet the every-rising cost of rent (our baby boomers all bought their houses before the prices quadrupled, and had these strange things called “raises” that I’ve never experienced in my lifetime… until I started my own business and raised my prices). Suffice to say, ALL holidays involve a lot of driving, postponements, rescheduling, and “wish you could have made it here”s.
But that’s not “worst Christmas”; that’s now “all holidays”. :( My Worst Christmas would have to be the year we arranged a week-before get-together with a fragment of my family that has three young children. Adorable little germ-farms they are! I spent most of the actual Christmas days writhing around in bed moaning as a horrid flu kicked my ass for three solid days. T_T
Ho ho ho HURKKKK!
Hmm, well the second panel does show three male and three female apartment-complex-mates. So at least Friends got that right…
From left to right, I’m thinking Ross, Monica, Joey, Phoebe, Chandler and Rachel. Not sure if i got those all correct but might be a bit depressing if I did since I haven’t seen that show in ages.
Unless she has more to add to it, this one’s just awkward. But I can see where if she had mostly good Christmases right up until that point how that one could stand out.
That’s it? that’s her sad story? Look I can see how that can hurt but it’s no way the worst I seen. Try to be the child of divorced parents with all your cousins also with divorced parents. It has been years since I seen all my family together and trying to organize yourself to see them is a fucking nightmare. Oh and let’s not forget the looks and the arguments when they tell you why you shouldn’t visit this or that relative or blaming you for being insensitive even if you are the only one who bothers visiting them. I gave up on Christmas being a family thing a long time ago. Now I celebrate with a family of my choosing, my friends, and it is the best thing I ever done.
Not to belittle what you were talking about (after all we are talking about a fictional character So any sympathy is skin deep), but i guess the phrase would be “at least you had someone to make you unhappy”.
I’m sure someone like that would eventually learn to be content with having no one love them or be there for them. But the fact is that story embodies what many of us who feel socially awkward go through. Getting up the courage to actually try and then seeing that no one cares, even if you gave them everything.
Of course that is making alot of assumptions on details we can only vaguely assume. For instance she didnt reference only being alone cus family went to Europe or something, thus Implying that she didnt have anyone else.
Embarrassing but I don’t think this tops three relatives dying on three consecutive Christmas days. Including my grandmother having a stroke in the car with a 13 year old me. My opinion of Christmas hasn’t been improved much by working ten years at the U.S. Post Office and now eighteen years in retail.
Worst Christmas. I was about 14. My parents, sister (9 at the time), and I were visiting my grandparents (mom’s parents) in Arizona. I loved them, but didn’t know them that well as it had been years since we seen them and they were heavily religious (Mormon). it was Christmas Eve, we had flown in from the East Coast, and my sister and I started feeling sick the second day we were there. We both had fevers and just wanted to rest. Mom was more concerned about appearances in front of her parents instead of her kids’ health, and forced us to go sped the day at this huge mall together which (as anyone could guess) was hellishly crowded. My sister and I spent Christmas Day violently sick (puke and all) while my mom and stepfather tried to make light of it all—making jokes and forcing us to stay up and open gifts.
Do introverts really act like Kaye says she did? I mean, as a young adult, she had to have been aware of her social awkwardness; wouldn’t she have given up trying ineptly by that age? Doesn’t it usually take an outside influence to get them to try, let alone rush into hosting a pre-Christmas party for complete strangers?
A socially awkward introvert might still make attempts to become better at it if they view it as a problem. I’d even say it’s more likely they’d try later in life at an age when they feel more confident with themselves, while more outgoing people would’ve been trying since their teenage years. Personally I made no attempts to get better at socializing until well into adulthood when I began to understand the value of networking (and simply having people to talk to). An introvert wouldn’t have been put down by the failure as much though.
Or perhaps she was never an introvert at all, just shy or something.
Must’ve been six or seven years ago when I (stupidly) brought a significant other to the Christmas celebration of the family that had basically adopted me over the years. ‘Cept that… that family contained my ex. By whom I’d been dumped two or three times over the years, gotten back together with, moved in with, and then dumped one final time. I got along with his parents and brothers magnificently, though, and they invited us. Ex’s grandparents hadn’t gotten the memo Ex and I were no longer together and kept giving me the stink eye and not speaking to me. Ex unhappily moped, and my mother complained about the food and kept trying to give diabetics sugar. It was a marvelous holiday…
All right, I appreciate the pun in the alt text, but I have no sympathy for Kaye. This situation is merely the result of terrible taste in television. >:|
Awww poop. I didn’t realize till now this could get very sad. This one’s already a bit feels and it’s story one!
Oh hey look, that’s recognizable chunks of my life… :(
You call that a bad holiday? Meh.
Disappointing, but nothing bad happened.
Yeah. The first five random people she happened to meet were not instant chums? A socially awkward situation didn’t pan out? That’s not a bad Christmas, that’s an important learning experience, even for the most Hughesian introvert.
That seemingly having been the end of her social exploration suggests she learned the wrong thing.
I’m suspecting the story continues on the next page. Plus its only the first salvo in a series of potentially five increasingly more depressing stories.
Lets see if anyone can top Phoebe Cates’ story from Gremlins.
The proximity of Christmas tree to cat tower in that apartment has got to be drawing some funny looks from Murphy.
I was just thinking that Cat Tree was magnificently decorated.
I spent last Christmas in a rehab hospital, having broken my leg a few icy days earlier. Rest of my family was gathering 350 miles away as was our yearly custom. Meanwhile I was getting an open wound on my ankle picked at and dressed 2x/day, and 5 shots a day. Christmas dinner was dry chicken breast, limp green beans and yellow jello. I was pretty lonely.
I had for the last few years grown weary of decorations and carols and the ilk. I got none of that last year. This year, I welcome that stuff with open arms. Merry Christmas, all!
Merry Christmas, Internet friend! I’d link you some delicious pictures of food to make up for it, but the site doesn’t seem to like that.
Hope this year involves less unwanted bodily damage :)
Absence really does make the heart grow fonder. It does sound like, even if it sucked completely in its own right, that shitty Christmas rekindled your ability to enjoy the holiday. So… yay?
The “worst” Christmas I’ve had wasn’t that bad at all. One friend wanted a driving buddy down to San Francisco, and I had a college friend there I thought it’d be neat to visit. It went fine aside from being on a bit of short notice and I forgot how much I hate being a guest. The buddy’s parents were the “oh no don’t get up we’ll run around doing everything for you” (but not passive-aggressively, sincere) type that drives me a bit nutty, I didn’t really click with them and the college buddy dynamic I expected to be back with my friend didn’t work in his parents’ house. It was nice enough, but it wasn’t the awesome idea it had seemed like when I came up with it.
Now if we expand to *other* holidays, then I can nominate the Thanksgiving where my friend invited me to her home, her entire extended family had been mistakenly informed by an overzealous mother that we were dating, one of their cats threw up on me the first night there (waking up covered in cat vomit is not fun), and I spent the whole week feeling like a seventeenth wheel in a too-crowded house.
Life lesson. What happens at school stays at school :)
When visiting other people for a short time be gracious and let them do whatever it is they want, such as catering to your every need. Just say thank you, and hit the bar on the way out.
I love visiting my parents, they always have plenty of chores to keep me busy. The best part is that as they get older and feebler there are more things for me to do.
are we going to have our own game of “Bad Christmas” in the comments? well, let the games begin.
Though i don’t think any of my Christmases have really been personally bad yet. all the awful seems to happen to other people around me, still affecting me, but not enough that I can really complain.
If we are doing that, I want to join! I was studying for an exam by my lonesome and trying to convince myself that working for Christmas night wasn’t at all depressing, when the accumulated snow on my roof broke it. I spent the rest of the night frantically putting buckets under leaks and unsuccesfully trying to get in touch with my owner.
Oh, and I failed that exam, too.
Some of the previous strip’s comments were real winners.
Well… my family are good people, and we’re all on good terms, but we’ve also all spread out to live in different cities after reaching adulthood, as did both my parents’ families of origin, plus my parents themselves divorced, so they relocated too. Finally the young adult generation (including myself) works desperate hours (with extreme difficulty booking off time) to meet the every-rising cost of rent (our baby boomers all bought their houses before the prices quadrupled, and had these strange things called “raises” that I’ve never experienced in my lifetime… until I started my own business and raised my prices). Suffice to say, ALL holidays involve a lot of driving, postponements, rescheduling, and “wish you could have made it here”s.
But that’s not “worst Christmas”; that’s now “all holidays”. :( My Worst Christmas would have to be the year we arranged a week-before get-together with a fragment of my family that has three young children. Adorable little germ-farms they are! I spent most of the actual Christmas days writhing around in bed moaning as a horrid flu kicked my ass for three solid days. T_T
Ho ho ho HURKKKK!
I stopped enjoying Christmas when I got old enough that I had to start giving gifts to other people. Up until then it had been great.
Hmm, well the second panel does show three male and three female apartment-complex-mates. So at least Friends got that right…
From left to right, I’m thinking Ross, Monica, Joey, Phoebe, Chandler and Rachel. Not sure if i got those all correct but might be a bit depressing if I did since I haven’t seen that show in ages.
LOL! Get on my level. She is definitely not the winner. This is barely scratching sad.
If she’s in a position to put on a meal like that, yeah, it’s barely scratching the surface. Social awkwardness or no.
Unless she has more to add to it, this one’s just awkward. But I can see where if she had mostly good Christmases right up until that point how that one could stand out.
That’s it? that’s her sad story? Look I can see how that can hurt but it’s no way the worst I seen. Try to be the child of divorced parents with all your cousins also with divorced parents. It has been years since I seen all my family together and trying to organize yourself to see them is a fucking nightmare. Oh and let’s not forget the looks and the arguments when they tell you why you shouldn’t visit this or that relative or blaming you for being insensitive even if you are the only one who bothers visiting them. I gave up on Christmas being a family thing a long time ago. Now I celebrate with a family of my choosing, my friends, and it is the best thing I ever done.
Not to belittle what you were talking about (after all we are talking about a fictional character So any sympathy is skin deep), but i guess the phrase would be “at least you had someone to make you unhappy”.
I’m sure someone like that would eventually learn to be content with having no one love them or be there for them. But the fact is that story embodies what many of us who feel socially awkward go through. Getting up the courage to actually try and then seeing that no one cares, even if you gave them everything.
Of course that is making alot of assumptions on details we can only vaguely assume. For instance she didnt reference only being alone cus family went to Europe or something, thus Implying that she didnt have anyone else.
Of course that is just an assumption.
You have friends?
Embarrassing but I don’t think this tops three relatives dying on three consecutive Christmas days. Including my grandmother having a stroke in the car with a 13 year old me. My opinion of Christmas hasn’t been improved much by working ten years at the U.S. Post Office and now eighteen years in retail.
Pfft! Wanna talk about Bad Christmases?
Last Christmas I gave you my heart. But the very next day, you gave it away.
Regifting is the worst.
Worst Christmas. I was about 14. My parents, sister (9 at the time), and I were visiting my grandparents (mom’s parents) in Arizona. I loved them, but didn’t know them that well as it had been years since we seen them and they were heavily religious (Mormon). it was Christmas Eve, we had flown in from the East Coast, and my sister and I started feeling sick the second day we were there. We both had fevers and just wanted to rest. Mom was more concerned about appearances in front of her parents instead of her kids’ health, and forced us to go sped the day at this huge mall together which (as anyone could guess) was hellishly crowded. My sister and I spent Christmas Day violently sick (puke and all) while my mom and stepfather tried to make light of it all—making jokes and forcing us to stay up and open gifts.
This is going to be a depressing week isn’t it?
Do introverts really act like Kaye says she did? I mean, as a young adult, she had to have been aware of her social awkwardness; wouldn’t she have given up trying ineptly by that age? Doesn’t it usually take an outside influence to get them to try, let alone rush into hosting a pre-Christmas party for complete strangers?
An introvert wouldn’t have invited that many people in the first place, especially strangers.
A socially awkward introvert might still make attempts to become better at it if they view it as a problem. I’d even say it’s more likely they’d try later in life at an age when they feel more confident with themselves, while more outgoing people would’ve been trying since their teenage years. Personally I made no attempts to get better at socializing until well into adulthood when I began to understand the value of networking (and simply having people to talk to). An introvert wouldn’t have been put down by the failure as much though.
Or perhaps she was never an introvert at all, just shy or something.
Ooh! Ooh! I want to play!
Must’ve been six or seven years ago when I (stupidly) brought a significant other to the Christmas celebration of the family that had basically adopted me over the years. ‘Cept that… that family contained my ex. By whom I’d been dumped two or three times over the years, gotten back together with, moved in with, and then dumped one final time. I got along with his parents and brothers magnificently, though, and they invited us. Ex’s grandparents hadn’t gotten the memo Ex and I were no longer together and kept giving me the stink eye and not speaking to me. Ex unhappily moped, and my mother complained about the food and kept trying to give diabetics sugar. It was a marvelous holiday…
All right, I appreciate the pun in the alt text, but I have no sympathy for Kaye. This situation is merely the result of terrible taste in television. >:|