Hellidays - When Bad Holidays Happen To Good People

The idea for the Hellidays site actually arose from an awful mishap on my part that caused me to lose the friendship of my best friend. He and his partner invited me to Thanksgiving. The next day, I erroneously sent an email to said friend detailing how awful the dinner was. The turkey was "as dry as sawdust" was one of the highlights. Though I begged forgiveness, we didn't speak for many years and only now have tentatively begun communicating again. It was wrong, bad, horrible and I will never get over it.

This story was told to me by a friend.

My friend had a classic upper-middle class American upbringing, complete with a large, stately home in an affluent suburb. A permanent fixture in the home was their dog, "bandit." Bandit was a mutt, and was older than most of the kids on the block, but beloved by all.

Thanksgiving was the largest holiday in this particular household. It was the day that all the aunts and uncles, cousins and respective significant others converged to engage in a feast only rivaled by that seen on "The Grinch."

The long Chippendale-esque dining table was fully set, and bulged with nearly 20 guests seated. Still, there was more than enough room for the lady of the house to glide around the table to serve... read more

On Thanksgiving Day, 2003, My mother and I wanted to get a head start on Christmas shopping.  We had a cooked a great Thanksgiving dinner that day.  All of our family came to the house to eat and everything went relatively well.  After eating Thanksgiving dinner and cleaning up some we decided to head out.  Our first stop was to get gas and then to our neighborhood Wal-Mart which was unexpectedly crowded.  They had some great pre-Christmas items on sale and we had to get our hands on them.  We proceeded to go into Wal-Mart.  I don't carry a purse, so I had my day planner with me with all my holiday cash and bill money in it.  

Ok, so we are in Wal-mart shopping our butts off.  My mother and I had split up to go get different it... read more

My cousin had chosen Thanksgiving weekend for his wedding ceremony in Boulder, Colorado. He and I are very close, so he asked me to be a witness. My boyfriend and I decided to drive there from Brooklyn because we both love a good road trip.

We left at 5 a.m. Wednesday morning, planning to drive straight through to arrive just in time for a family reunion around the Thanksgiving turkey. We were making great progress having gone 700 miles as we crossed the border from Ohio into Indiana. That’s when our 11 year-old Nissan Pathfinder decided it couldn’t go another foot. Bad distributor cap.

It was about 4:30 p.m. and getting dark. We called our road club for a tow to the nearest garage. Then, we waited in the cold for about two hours... read more

We all went down the block, eight houses away, to Aunt Lu and Uncle Norman's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Aunt Lu's table was, as always, set beautifully. Uncle Norman brought the turkey out on the platter and began to carve.

Aunt Lu looked over and began to scream "Norm.....AAAAAAAAA!!", pointing at the turkey. Uncle Norm dropped the carving knife, my
mother spilled her water, my son, cousin and brother started to laugh and the rest of us sat there stunned. Inside the turkey was a soft textured "tube", ranging in color from chartreuse to dark green.

Well, needless to say, we didn't eat that turkey, but being Italian, there was ravioli and sausage, meatballs, salad...lots of good stuff to eat, and of course, dessert.

We l... read more