Obviously, we really like alliteration. We also really like hoodies (we’ll get to this in a minute), and we honestly love the holidays. Our favorite holiday of all time is probably Thanksgiving - which makes it that much more mind-blowing that it is, without a doubt, the most miserable day of the year for us.
It wasn’t always so bad. When we were wee (see, there’s that alliteration again!), we would go to our grandparents’ 75 acre farm in the middle of Pennsylvania. Aunts, uncles, and cousins from far and wide - hitting maybe 40 deep, overall - would come to celebrate. We would have a homecooked meal, perhaps a tractor-pulled hayride. We definitely remember jumping off rafters on the second story of the barn into hay bales. Our mother was not around to see this - our then-delinquent, now ultra-religious uncle was watching us. And our older sister. We did not get hurt. Our (other) uncle ran around the house in our grandmother’s curlers and robe, our older cousins played cards with us until we couldn’t stay awake any longer.
This all changed when our grandparents got older and moved into a retirement ‘village’. It was still ok - homecooked, family. And then, our grandfather died on Thanksgiving. That kind of set the bar for terrible Thanksgivings. Years since have included:
Wearing nametags at dinner (to introduce step-grandfather’s family to our own, though it should be noted that we loved them very much)
Being thrown out of dinner for refusing to dance the Macarena
Dinner being prepared by cooks at a retirement home, so it was low-sodium and easy to chew
Dinner being held in a restaurant that was essentially a diner with carpet
The boisterous family of 40+ being reduced to a table of 8
The 8 discussing being laid off, unemployment, Parkinson’s and impotence (honestly, as in our aunt [by marriage] asking our mother about her husband/our uncle/our mom’s brother about his impotence)
A rather mean-spirited game where you have a mystery gift exchange of wrapped presents, and we ended up with a pie - while our sister ended up with a coveted Farside calendar
We know this sounds like such a downer, but we honestly have to laugh about it because if we don’t, we will probably cry a lot. When we heard that this year, one of our immediate family members would not be joining us, and our aunt was having the cooks in <i>her</i> retirement village cook for us, we actually started to cry.
What does all this have to do with anything else? Well. We want to hear everyone else’s stories so we don’t feel quite as sorry for ourselves. It doesn’t have to be particularly tragic or sad - but we want to hear your most ridiculous, silly, outlandish, unbelievable, pathetic, sad, tragic, amusing holiday story you’ve got. As a prize, we’ve been lucky enough to score 3 Super Hood hoodies from Champion to give away. We’ve got one on now - as we are, it’s been mentioned, always cold. And we are not cold, and we look rather cute. And quite frankly, during this season we have been known to pull the hood up over our heads and pull the string tight so no one can see us. Er, so we can’t see them. So. Tell us your best holiday story (any holiday!), and you could win one. We have three to give away - red, light blue, and a pale pink. The sizes claim to be L/XL, but we find they fit more like S/M. Send us your best stories here, and be sure to indicate what color hoodie is your first choice. We’ll pick one winner for each color, so three winners total.
Entries are due by the end of the day, Monday. EST.
-LB
Source: BS Contests: Hoodies for A Horrible Holiday
