Funny holiday letters: Take 5

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By Times readers | Sunday, December 24, 2006 10:09 PM CST | () comments

Most embarrassing moment

My holidays are no different than any other family’s, other than what happened one Christmas Day just outside of Milwaukee.

After getting out of the car we didn’t even want to stop and say hello to our family; we wanted to go right to the ice where we knew our cousin from California would be. My brother and I went inside and moments later we were out on the ice and were playing hockey; minus the skates, stick, and puck. Instead we used our shoes and a tennis ball we had found inside, which made it more like ice soccer.

My brother came out of nowhere and was charging at me out of control. The next thing I knew we were all on the ground laughing. With out of control laughter I tried to stand back up but couldn’t I was laughing so hard. The next thing I knew my leg was warm and my butt was wet; I peed my pants. It wouldn’t have been so embarrassing if I would just have had to go into the house and right upstairs to change. Instead, I had to parade past seventy of my relatives with wet jeans.

-- Kaylie Newman, Bettendorf

Mall adventure

It was 6 am on the day after Thanksgiving, the single busiest shopping day of the year. The air had a brisk, crisp feel to it. My mom and I grabbed our essentials: keys, phone, and money and raced to the Woodfield mall in Schaumburg, Illinois, the suburb right next to my grandma’s house.

Our adventure began at the parking lot, with the quest to find a parking spot, any parking spot would do. Endless rows of parked cars. We managed to nab a parking spot at the very end of the parking lot. After a million miles of walking, we entered the mall at the Macy’s entrance and immediately became overwhelmed with the massive amounts of people scurrying around the store.

The entire mall was filled to maximum capacity. With many different people bustling about trying to grab all the early bird special deals they could get their grubby little hands on.

The shopping process began to take a toll on our exhausted bodies, and the feeling of hunger conquered our desire to shop. We took a break at my favorite cookie place in the mall. As I ordered my double chocolate chip cookie sandwich with cream in the middle the smile upon my face grew. As I turned around with the cookie in my hand, the lady behind me let out a huge sneeze, engulfing my cookie with germs. I was heartbroken.

-- Lauren Melik, Bettendorf

Looking for lettuce in all the wrong places

The day has come for a new year to arrive. The New Years that I am writing about is from two years previous and my friend Odell was in town.

I decided to hang out with Odell on New Years. The night started out fine, we were having fun driving around and going to different places. We went to Paul’s house to get some lettuce. We walked into a house full of drunks, and one was a man dressed as a woman. I felt a little uncomfortable, so we grabbed the lettuce and left.

The year was coming to an end, while waiting for the New Year, Odell munched a lot of food. This man ate about 50 miniature candy bars, a pack of pop tarts, and about 5 rice crispy treats. I was shocked at Odell’s feast of pure sugar. After all of this eating, Odell and I were extremely tired, so we passed out on my living room floor. After the long night of waiting for the New Year, we didn’t even stay up for it. Here is one tip though: do not let Odell near your pantry.

-- Alex Andrews, Bettendorf

My dream of Santa

My family loves Christmas and they gave me gifts on my bed Christmas morning as if they were Santa because I believed that Santa Claus existed.

When I was four, I wrote a letter to Santa after I got his gifts. I didn’t even know if he was Japanese or if he could understand Japanese. In the letter, I asked him, “Please come to my house after you are finished.” Then, I handed the letter to my parents so they could send it to Santa.

Needless to say, the person who gave me gifts was my parents not Santa. After they got the letter, they felt embarrassed. They didn’t want me to be disappointed. That weekend, Santa came to my house. We had a good time making cookies together. However, when I was twelve, there was no gift by my bed on Christmas morning. I was sad and asked my mom why Santa gave me nothing. Finally, my mom said, “The Santa Claus that you met when you were four was your dad, Mami!” Then, I felt as if a big earthquake had destroyed my dream of Santa Claus. After that, my Santa Claus gave me money.

-- Mami Yamamoto, LeClaire, Iowa

They were safe

Every Thanksgiving my mom’s six siblings go to my Grandma Trudy’s house, each of them having at least two kids. The parents can’t seem to watch everything that’s going on while the moms are preparing the feast and the dads are watching the football games. Unfortunately my two youngest cousins, John and Dave, were all about Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles mimicking their every move.

John, who was four at the time, and Dave, who was three, ended up wandering over to my grandma’s best friend’s house, Mary Jane, who lived just across the street. Mary Jane lived alone so loved to have them over. Time flew by and she forgot to notify my grandma that they were there.

Their mother, Janice, went downstairs trying to grab the kids away from what she thought their action figures to indulge in their feast. Chaos broke out in my grandma’s house when John and Dave were missing. Search parties gathered and an hour later my grandma received a phone call from Mary Jane telling her that the boys moseyed over accidentally and were safe. The Thanksgiving feast was finally devoured with everyone.

-- Ellie Smith, Bettendorf

No normal photo

You’d think that taking a family Christmas photo is easy. Well, it isn’t. My family is a four-person disaster. Not a single photo came out normal! My cousin Zach can’t keep a straight face and he couldn’t help but laughing; in just about every picture. Then when Zach finally had a good picture, my dad had his eyes closed.

Once again, Zach would start laughing, forcing my mom to start laughing. We finally had a good picture, or what I thought was a good picture. If you look at it, you can see that my mom is leaning forward a little bit, with a smile on her face as if she were laughing. She said that she deserved to look like that because of what she did. Right when the picture was taken, she (passed gas). I immediately burst into laughter and couldn’t control myself, literally. I started peeing my pants and couldn’t stop. Next thing you know, I’m running out of the room and upstairs while I have deepening dark lines forming on the back of my jeans. That was maybe our first and last attempt to have our family photo taken for a Christmas card.

-- Jana Stolze, Bettendorf

Waiting for Santa

At Christmas some years ago, the whole family was together. Everybody was lounging around on Christmas Eve. The cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents were all there. Before we all went to bed, my cousin Shawn asked my dad if he could go outside and watch Santa come. My dad told him he needed his rest and that he would watch for Santa. As Shawn goes to sleep, my dad climbs up on the roof to wait for Santa. After 15 minutes, he gets down and comes inside. All the adults laugh hysterically at him that he actually climbed on to the roof.

The next morning, Shawn woke up and came running to my dad, “Did you see Santa?” So my dad went off and told him everything. He explained how he saw Santa and the reindeer and when they landed on the roof it made a loud pounding noise. Shawn was really impressed and couldn’t wait till next year because he wanted to sit on the roof and see Santa himself.

-- Erin Richter, Bettendorf

That wonderful fruitcake

Every year we do the same thing over and over again. Get the Christmas tree out; get the delicious dinner ready for our family to feast on. Of course, get the presents out to open. Well, I almost forgot one thing, the fruitcake! Oh yes, every year our family and my Uncle Bob trade a fruitcake back and forth every Christmas.

Fruitcake you may ask? Well, for the past seven years we have been passing back and forth this yummy looking fruitcake. I am sure that the fruitcake tastes mighty fine by now.

Maybe this year we can pass it on to a different family member, and get more people involved. Add a little flavor to it, and we should make someone eat it!

-- Emma McDowell, Bettendorf

Good Santa

With a surplus of adrenaline running through my small veins, I lay wired and could not sleep. Unlike most children on Christmas Eve I was not excited, I was petrified. My older sister, Jessica had tricked me once again. She told me Santa Claus would come down our chimney and rob us. At the young age of four, I did not know any better than to believe her. I knew that Santa would not come until everyone was sleeping, so I stayed in my room, lying on my bunk bed with a purple, plastic toy golf club. This club apparently stood as my defense against Santa Claus.

As the “hours” went by, I stayed completely quiet. Suddenly, I heard some scuffling noises through my living room. As the mysterious noises continued, I slowly crept out of my bed, tightly grasping my weapon. I reached out my shaking hand and turned the small door handle that would lead to the ferocious Santa Claus. As the door wiggled open, I hesitantly opened my eyes to find my parents standing in the living room.

With shock, they looked up at me and quickly told me to go straight back to bed. Reluctantly, I went back to bed. I intended to stay awake and catch Santa in his act, but I fell asleep. I woke up a few hours later and decided to see what destruction Santa had caused. After I crawled down my bunk bed, I peeked my head through the door to amazingly see the living room filled with presents. Santa had not robbed my family; he gave us wonderful gifts instead. As I sorted through the presents, my parents told me it was a good thing I went to sleep or Santa would not have brought all of these great gifts.

-- Melissa Barnes, Bettendorf

Opening presents at midnight

One Christmas, about five years ago, all of our relatives came to our house for the Christmas holiday. Everyone is always excited to go to anyone else’s house for Christmas but my grandparent’s because we always have Christmas and Thanksgiving at my grandparent’s house in Des Moines, Iowa.

This particular Christmas, we we’re all too excited to have Christmas at our house in the good old LeClaire, Iowa because it was the first time we had Christmas in our new recently added on house. We we’re also excited because of how many presents there were underneath the Christmas tree.

Our tradition is to wait until exactly midnight to give our gifts to each other and open them up. Once it hits midnight, we dig through the presents to find the ones with our name on it. When my brother found one of his presents, a Game Boy Advance, I think he almost had a heart attack because he was shaking and jumping up and down so much from the excitement of finally having a Game Boy he could barely breathe. He was also waving his hands around like a dog flops its ears around trying to rid himself of wetness.

-- Cassandra Ellis, LeClaire

Memorable cake

My family always celebrates my little brother and my birthday on the same weekend. When I was turning nine I decided that it would be in the best interest of my family to bake my little brother a cake using all of his favorite things. I awoke early on the morning of his birthday in anticipation of have the cake ready for him to indulge on for breakfast. I set out to prepare the best birthday cake ever, but little did I know that this was not how the finished product would turn out.

I ended up accidentally tripling the amount of flour for the cake, which leads to a very messy oven. But paying little attention to the ingredients, the cake was ready to be placed in the oven. I awoke close to two hours later on the couch with a stench of burnt in my nose and the scream of my mother. Apparently, I had fallen asleep and the cake had overflowed the petite cake pan I had chosen. Three hours later I was still explaining to my mother the entire story as she scraped at the charred cake burned in the oven. It was not the best way to wake up my family on my little brother’s birthday, but looking back at it now, it was probably the most memorable one that he will share with us.

-- Kirbie Knutsen, Bettendorf

Pop goes the cork

It was Christmas night, and every year for the holidays my whole entire family will get together at my dad’s parents house. After the dinner was done everyone sat down and began to eat the very large dinner that had been cooking all day. Everyone was very happy to see each other and to be in each other’s company. Usually the adults will have special wine with their dinner, so my Papa Norm went into the kitchen and began to get the wine out. He was having a lot of problems with the cork, it wouldn’t come out.

Finally the corkscrew was stuck in the cork so far is popped out the other end. Papa Norm gave it a few tugs and began to get frustrated; finally POP it came out and flew so high it broke the light above the sink. Instantly glass flew everywhere and everyone jumped out of their seats, mouths full and ran into the kitchen. Right away my Uncle Brad grabbed a towel and took the remaining light bulb out of the ceiling and cleaned up the glass on the floor. My mom made sure the glass on the counter and sink were picked up and finally the wine bottle had not broken. Eventually we all sat back down after a frustrating but hilarious incident and had a wonderful Christmas with wine and all.

-- Nicole Adams, LeClaire

New PlayStation

The funniest holiday moment I think that I have ever had was back when my brother and I got a brand new Playstation, this was top of the line back than. This would have to be the best Christmas I would have up to this point of my life.

Waking before the sun could shine its light, we ran down the steps to find our brand new Playstation, with games and controllers under the Christmas tree. This thing was fully loaded we could not believe our eyes, for a moment I had to pinch myself because I thought I was dreaming. After opening all of our presents, it was a mad dash to find our gifts from Santa; swimming in all of the wrapping paper we finally found it after a few bumps and bruises of course. Putting in our first ever game to be played on this machine was Tony Hawks the very first one that came out.

We couldn’t believe this was real; the graphics were unreal. After about four hours of non-stop playing we had to go eat. Both of us were light-headed, as we had never played that long and hard before. The next thing I remember was hearing a loud crash and then my brother came out of the kitchen with a long face. He had dropped a huge plate of the vegetables all over the kitchen floor simply because of playing the Playstation for too long!

-- Aaron Edwards, LeClaire

Search for the perfect tree

My family goes on the search for the perfect tree every single year the day after Thanksgiving ever since I can remember, and this wasn’t any different. But this year it was really nice and warm. We had an addition to this adventure, which was different than the other years that we’ve gone on. We loaded into the cars and headed on our way to a new tree location.

We got lost once and then found the place where my dad wanted to go, but when we got there the place was closed. We decided to go to a tree patch that we’ve gone to before. One thing you should know before you hear the rest of this story is that my dad thinks that there is one perfect tree every single year for our family. We head north then we head west then we go north again and guess what, no perfect tree, imagine that. Then we go southeast and across the bridge that is close to the high grass.

We trace up and down the tree line looking for that tree, but no luck, so we head back the way we started and my dad thought he found the perfect tree, but once again, no luck. We’ve probably been out there for maybe half an hour but for me that seems forever and I got bored. So we headed back across the bridge were my brother tried to push me over the side, but I didn’t budge, which is good because it looked like I might have got hurt if I go over the edge.

We headed over to the tall grass on the side of the hill because our dad is still on the search, so I went to see if anything had been found but once again, nothing. I saw my brother Chris and I saw him crouching down, so he wouldn’t have to get his picture taken from our mom. I came running up behind Chris and I pushed him face forward where he proceeds to roll onto his back upside down on that hill.

Then here’s Chris waving his arms shaking around telling my mom to help him up because he’s stuck and can’t get up. But my mom was laughing at him hysterically along with my brother and his girlfriend. At the end of this luckily we finally found that perfect Christmas tree of the year. Thank goodness!

-- Eric Johnson, LeClaire

The big fight

Christmas comes only once and year, and thank God; otherwise, we wouldn’t survive. For normal families, Christmas is full of cheer and good will. With mine, it is fighting. My older brother and I are no exception. This event happened one Christmas when he was seventeen and I was eleven.

I sit on the couch eating Christmas dinner. A nasty comment comes from his side of the room. I look over to see who had fired it. I notice my brother sitting with a triumphant smirk. I launch a quick counter-strike by attacking his intelligence. Jumping to his feet, acting macho, he dares me to say another word. I shove his confidence in a hole by throwing my cup in his face.

A tussle ensues. He wrestles as I choke him. The fight moves toward the stairs, and he lunges for my feet, mistaking this fight for a wrestling match. I raise my knee and strike him across the temple. He stumbles to his feet and staggers to the stairs. I see my chance and send a hard kick, sending him flying down the stairs. Soaring over the steps not touching a single one, he slams onto the landing and lies motionless, knocked out at the bottom of the stairs.

Hours later he gives out a woeful groan and sits up complaining about his back hurting. Since then, he has never started a fight again.

-- Trent Anagnostopoulos, LeClaire

It was no D-Day

It was 1997. A year that would forever be remembered as one of the worst. Bill Clinton caught himself in a trap hooking up with an intern, the passing of one of our most favorable princesses, Mother Teresa also passes away, and my Christmas couldn’t get any worse.

That year I made a special emphasis on my parents to get me the Nintendo 64 game console saying that, “if they don’t, it will ruin Christmas.” It seems though that my parents would always hint that they wouldn’t get it for me by asking, “You would like clothes for Christmas, right?” This would really get on my nerves, seeing that they might actually do something like that to me. I felt like I was going insane over those past days, not able to sleep at night because of what they would say to me. It would run back and forth in between my ears . . . “You would like clothes, right?” Finally, the day came, Christmas morning, and I literally jumped out of bed to go get my new Nintendo.

“Can I open it now?” I asked eagerly. My parents nodded their heads, but I already had gotten most of the wrapping off. Piece by piece, I cold almost see my gift! Oh God, what could it be! I hope it’s my new Nintendo! I can feel the excitement taking me over, almost giving me a heart attack with a couple of light strokes. Then it happened. It was clothes! Not only that, but baby clothes, that were pink. I looked at my parents in shock, and then began to cry. Confused by my parent’s laughter, I began to cry really loud. What have I done to deserve this! I had been a good boy all year! I bet all my friends are playing their new Nintendo at this very moment in time! I began to feel the excitement die within me, leaving me alone in this cruel world. My god! Show your wrath on thee for I have nothing to live for!

Somewhere in the chaos my mom, trying to fight the laughter, said, “That’s not your present, that’s your sister’s!” “What?” I said to myself. Then it all made sense ... but of course! The pink baby clothes that I thought had been for me were in fact for my sister, who at the time had been 3 years old. “Oh silly me, I should have realized this!” I thought to myself. Oh, what a clown I have made myself, opening my sisters present, everyone knows to open THEIR presents, NOT OTHERS. So in turn, Christmas ended up being Christmas and not D-day. And I think it’s safe to say that I’ve never put more hours into my new Nintendo than I ever have with any video games on that faithful day.

-- Peter Dadhwal, Bettendorf

Bad Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is here and all the Follands are here and ready to eat. We have three turkeys, five pounds of mash, two pounds of green, and a lot more. As the whole Folland family sits down to eat, we put all the food onto the table and every thing was going good until we put the plates on the table to eat off of and crack, the table started to break. All the food, well we tried to get it before it all fell; we had to have at least 150 pounds, no joke, of food. It was nuts.

So back to what I was saying, all the food started to slide as the table cracked. We tried to get it but it was too late, boom, smash. The turkeys went first, then the rest, making one nasty, but good smelling, mess. But, all in all, we tried to save what we could. Then, the rest to the dogs. It was a bad Thanksgiving, but funny all at the same time.

-- David Folland, LeClaire

The wrong tree

One year my family and I got this big Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. It was not the nicest tree ever; it was uneven and lop-sided. The tree would fall over about every night and sometimes during the day. Then one time it fell over on my dad. After that tree, we had about two more real trees and then we got a fake tree.

-- Fred Hess, Bettendorf

Watch that cat

Every year my family has the big event of putting up the tree. Not just any tree but the Christmas tree. As we each have are own ornaments that we received throughout the years. Each one meaning something special that happened. It brings back happy and sad memories, but it brings us all together. But this Christmas took the cake for what occurred during this get together.

My little brother was playing with the cat and with one of its toys. While playing with the cat he threw it without knowing what direction. The way he threw it was toward the tree, which was being put up. It landed into the tree and our cat went straight for it knocking over the tree. Filling our faces with shock and despair, turning into smiles and laughs as the cat scurried for safety. That moment will remain with me all my life and my family.

-- Bobby Haessler, LeClaire

Too many milk bones

Dogs have been known to eat anything in sight, and my dog was no exception. I remember the Christmas of 1997 like it was yesterday. There are a few events you should know ahead of time: We had just bought a Shetland sheep dog, we had named her Missi, and she loved to eat. Also, we will admit to spoiling her, after all, she was our first pet.

On Christmas Eve, I realized that our dog Missi was the only part of the family without a present stuffed under our tree. So I bought her a box of milk bones and wrapped them up in purple and yellow wrapping paper.

The next morning, I awoke to three things: 1) the Christmas tree toppled over the living room floor, and 2) my dog Missi cowering next to a ripped open box of milk bones, and my personal favorite, 3) a pile of bright yellow and purple puke.

Not only had my dog smelled her present, she wanted it so bad, she opened it, and then proceeded to eat it, yes, all of it. I hadn’t expected MY Christmas present to be cleaning up after my dog’s gifts of choice, but looking back, it was a pretty hilarious Christmas story.

-- Kara Bennett, LeClaire