12 People Who Will Never Forget That One Specific Christmas

Each Christmas has its own story and memorable moments. But some years stand out more than others and remain engraved in our minds long after. While the reasons might sometimes be unpleasant, we can’t deny that even those challenging moments have a much lighter effect on us, thanks to the magic of Christmas that makes everything seem brighter.

• I was a kid, and it was Christmas Eve when there was a knock on our front door. I opened it, and there stood an old man asking for directions to the train station. Our house was in the middle of suburbia, so he must have been walking in the wrong direction for hours.
  My dad gave him directions and offered to drive him, but he declined and thanked us. As he was leaving, he looked down at me and said something really strange. “Never go to that place that scares you.”
  This man was really, really old and walked at a shuffling pace. Shrugging off his comment, I went back to the living room. As he was walking down our path, it started to rain. My dad went to get an umbrella from under the stairs to give to him, and when he went back outside, the man had disappeared. My dad ran down the path and up and down the street trying to find him, but he was nowhere to be seen.
  The place I was scared of was a shack in the woods I used to walk past on my way to and from school. It always gave me a bad feeling. A few years later, we heard that a tragedy happened there. © Unknown user / Reddit

• We celebrate Christmas Eve with a large family gathering, where either an uncle or an unknown neighbor gets the honor of being Santa.
  A few years ago, one of my cousins played Santa. His girlfriend went up to sit on Santa’s lap and receive her gift. She didn’t know it was him. When she opened her gift, it was a ring, and he proposed. It was really sweet, but it took her forever to say yes.
  I thought for a few minutes she was going to say no, in front of his entire extended family. So, Santa got his wish this time. © wbear444 / Reddit

• I bought my whole family tickets to see James Brown live. Literally within minutes of them opening their presents, it was announced on the news Christmas morning that James Brown had died. © AMC_Tendies4***9 / Reddit

• When I was about 11, it was about a month before Christmas, and my mom and I were in a $2 shop. I saw an ornament of some clowns. I told my mom how creepy I thought they were and how much I hated clowns.
  Fast forward to Christmas morning, and I open a present which is a long can, and inside is a clown. Not just any clown, but the really scary kind. My mom laughed and reminded me of our $2 store trip. She had already bought it and decided to give it to me anyway. Thanks, mom. © PrincessGreenEyes14 / Reddit

• One year, I got a set of nice artist’s colored pencils. It was a nice gift. They were good quality, and I had use for them. The problem is, my sister got an iPod touch, and my parents both got so excited about it that they each got each other one without knowing, so everyone got iPod touches. When they opened them, my mom yelled, “This is so cool! We all got one!”
  I didn’t get one. I got colored pencils. © Batmantheon / Reddit

• I stayed over at my friend’s house for about a week, and I brought over a box of my favorite cereal. Then I accidentally left it there, and I kept forgetting to go get it, and my friend kept forgetting to give it back to me. So, for Christmas, my friend wrapped the box of cereal and gave it back to me.
  © billyandteddy / Reddit

• One Christmas, my husband’s stepmother gave me, a 36-year-old at the time, a kindergarten-sized backpack. When I opened it, she said, “I actually bought that for —— (a child) a few years ago, and she hated it, so I threw it in a closet. I saw it and thought you’d like it. None of us did; we all think it’s ugly.”
  That same year, they gave my three kids gifts totaling $15 altogether, with clearance stickers on them. Meanwhile, her biological granddaughter opened a $300 unicorn. They made sure we knew it cost $300, pointed out our clearance stickers to everyone, claiming they were great deals (they weren’t), and then made my kids leave the room, so the granddaughter could take pictures alone with her unicorn.
  It was the last Christmas we visited them. © Unknown user / Reddit

• At the first real company I worked at, they had a cheesy Christmas party, and during it, you took a picture with Santa, which they then cut up and put into a cheap Christmas ornament. I was in my early 20s, and my first Christmas bonus was a picture with me and Santa in a plastic snowflake.
  My dad thought it was hysterical and still puts it on his tree in a place of prominence, reminding me of it every year when I stop by. I’m 50 years old now, and my dad still thinks it’s funny and loves to tease me about it. © twinner928 / Reddit

• I was dating and living with an ex at the time. For Christmas, he wanted a very fancy and specific-looking button-up shirt. I spent a month making him the shirt, ensuring it was perfect. I also prepared a nice Christmas dinner. On Christmas morning, I gave him the shirt, and he tried it on, loving it. Yay!
  However, he then got a panicked look on his face, reached into his pocket, pulled out $100, and said, “Um... here you go. My friends are coming over today, so... you have somewhere to be, right?” Essentially, he was paying me to leave. On the bright side, I knew right then and there how he actually felt about me. I ended things before the new year. © MissAnthropy612 / Reddit

• One year, myself and my two cousins were at my grandma’s house for Christmas morning. All the family was there, and there was a big, gorgeous pile of presents wrapped in the corner. We (me and my cousins) were promptly told that those gifts were for the other grandchildren.
  When we gave our grandma the blank stare of confused children, she hurried back into her room, threw an old Ziplock bag down at the ground between us (full of half-used nail polish and broken jewelry), and told us Merry Christmas. © itisSUNNYinhere / Reddit

• My ex-wife bought me snowshoes for Christmas the last year we were together, despite multiple discussions about my lack of interest in going snowshoeing with her and her friends. © ArianaGlans / Reddit

• I used to work for an airline and had to work on Christmas most years. Usually, the managers would provide a decent meal, either catered from somewhere like Famous Dave’s or by bringing in a ham and everything.
  The last Christmas before I left the company, the manager decided airplane food would suffice. They literally brought in little individual meals from the airplane catering company that consisted of a few shreds of some unknown gray meat, a small lump of mashed potatoes, and half the meal was bland-looking steamed vegetables that absolutely stank. After getting a whiff, one coworker said, “Only seafood should smell like seafood.” © lhok13 / Reddit

Our family is one of our most precious blessings, and we’re reminded of this the most during the holidays. But even though we think we know everything about our close ones, there are often hidden secrets that can have a transformative effect on us once revealed, and the people in this article know this firsthand.