Naomi’s Crazy Christmas Story

Christmas Day is a time for peaceful snow falls, cheerfully sung carols, and harmonious family time… for everyone else. For my family, Christmas is more like a series of unfortunate events leading into a comedy of errors. Don’t get me wrong - we always have a blast, but it’s a bit of a rough sleigh ride getting there.

I have eight brothers. Yes, you read that right. Eight. Birth, adopted, foster, and found. Between our motley crew and extended family, Christmas always makes for a massive affair. But one fateful Christmas Day stands out above the rest…

I was 11. It was Christmas morning, but my parents had told me and my siblings weeks earlier that there weren’t going to be any presents this year... something about ends not meeting. So, none of us were super excited. Still, we awoke at the crack of dawn, because Mom had promised us each a stocking and Christmas cookies for breakfast!

We raced down the stairs. Our St. Bernard, named Bernie (in honor of MLB center fielder Bernabé “Bernie” Figueroa Jr. Williams) was hot on our heels. We gathered all our cookie ingredients. Mom set the butter on the counter to soften, and we all headed to the living room to watch our VHS of The Grinch, happy as clams.

After the Whos sliced the roast beast, I walked back into the kitchen for a glass of water and… Bernie was standing up on his hind legs, licking the last of the butter off the counter! I screamed, everyone came running, my little brother cried, and Mom poured us all a bowl of weird knock-off  ‘Cheerios.’ No cookies, but fear not, all was not lost… there were still Christmas stockings to open!

Inside our stockings were toothbrushes, deodorant, socks, and an orange covered in cloves. I remember pulling out the orange and looking at my mom in confusion. “Um, Mom, what the heck is this?” It was apparently a DIY air freshener some home magazine had told her we needed in our lives until… ANTS! Ants started crawling out of my rotting clove orange. My second-youngest brother, who had a weird fear of all things creepy-crawly at the time, started screaming. My dad jumped up and grabbed my orange. He ran to the front door and hurled it out into the snow. “Give me your oranges, quick,” he shouted. One by one he tossed them into the snow outside.

My mom burst into tears. As we tried to console her, there was a knock at the door. It was my auntie, my mother’s voluptuous, beautiful, bougie, and loud sister. She was armed with four bottles of wine and a tray of homemade mac and cheese. My parents don’t drink, so my auntie was ‘girl drink drunk’ in two hours flat, and her mac and cheese was awful. Believe it or not, it had too much cheese (yeah, that can be a thing). There was gouda, swiss, cheddar, havarti, and company up in there, and it was not a tasty combo, lol.

Now, one of my older brothers (we’ll call him "Big Mouth"), opened his big mouth and told our drunk auntie exactly how nasty he thought her mac and cheese was, not knowing that she and her whiny on-again/off-again boyfriend were off again. Naturally, she was in a delicate place and his criticism struck her to the core. She jumped to her feet to proclaim big mouth “an ungrateful little sh*t,” but after three bottles of wine, her balance was off, and she toppled over into the Christmas tree and it all came tumbling down.

SILENCE.

My mom started laughing hysterically. We all joined in, even auntie and Big Mouth. Auntie ordered us all Chinese to make up for almost murdering us with dairy. I was halfway through an eggroll, and things were looking up. There was another knock at the door… it was my BFF, my ride-or-die from middle school. In her hand was her Esméralda Barbie doll… the one I always played with when I visited her at what my middle school mind thought was a mansion. I was obsessed with this Barbie. She held it out to me and said, “Merry Christmas.”

Best. Christmas. Ever.

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Your turn! What's the craziest thing to happen to you during the holidays? We'd love to hear it!