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Crappy Holidays (view source)

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Whether it be because you are trying to make everything perfect for the family, or family just came to you to ruin your day, to braving the long, savage lines in stores and still not getting the perfect gift, to just never having the time to rest, the difficulty of keeping things in control as the chaos of the holidays approach makes you think they'd be more aptly named "Hellidays". Often, to add insult to injury, freak weather or other [[Diabolus Ex Machina|acts of "God"]] will compound the hardship.
 
This could also be reminiscence, a frequent subversion of the supposedly joyful holiday atmosphere, when characters reflect on how [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|crappy their holidays]] are. Thanksgiving seems to be a frequent target. This may be because it brings families together but is also secular, which is perfect for the mood to be ruined by some argument between people who don't normally spend holidays together, someone coming out of the closet, etc.
 
It is this whenever a certain holiday causes, directly or indirectly, conflict. Can be [[Truth in Television]].
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== [[Literature]] ==
* There's a scene in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Hogfather|Hogfather]]'' where the wizards at Unseen University start thinking back on all the things that bug them about the holiday season, including disappointing presents, family feuds cropping up, and flaming rows over board games.
* ''[[The Dresden Files]]'' short story "Harry's Day Off" features more things going wrong in Harry's life than a regular novel does.
* ''[[How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Literaturenovel)|How the Grinch Stole Christmas]]''. The main character hates Christmas so much he decides to ruin it for everyone else. {{spoiler|He failed, and in that failure he finds the true meaning of the holiday.}}
 
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* ''[[NCIS (TV)|NCIS]]'': Almost without fail, the team is working straight through whatever holiday comes up, usually at Gibbs' insistence. Topped by the time that Ziva and Gibbs were {{spoiler|trapped in a gas station, during a blizzard, on Christmas Eve/Christmas Morning, hunted by mercenaries, outnumbered, and ''delivering a freaking baby.''}}
* ''[[Bones (TV)|Bones]]'': The main characters were ''not'' happy to be trapped in the lab in quarantine over Christmas.
* ''[[The Closer]]'': They get dragged into working through work more than once. Special props for Raydor, who's only still at work because a little brat pulled a see-through [[Police Brutality Gambit]].
* Any holiday episode of ''[[Malcolm in Thethe Middle]]'', pretty much without fail.
** Ditto for ''[[The Middle]]''.
* Most holiday episodes of ''[[Sabrina the Teenage Witch (TV series)|Sabrina the Teenage Witch]]'' involve some kind of holiday-specific disaster occuring. Sabrina spent most major holidays fixing the holiday related problems she had created. Notable examples include taking over delivery of Christmas presents after injuring Santa Claus, trying to prevent Christmas from being erased as a holiday, rounding up a bunch of monsters she'd recruited for a halloween party, and dealing with a bunch of zombies she had inadvertantly summoned to Westbridge.
* Tommy Solomon, ''[[3rd Rock Fromfrom the Sun]]'', about their first Thanksgiving on Earth:
{{quote| Sorry I left like that. I found out something pretty cool. You know how you try to make this a special day, but all the resentment I have for you came spewing out and we ended up spending the whole day avoiding each other? It's ''normal''.}}
* Thanksgiving is a frequent target of ''[[Friends (TV)|Friends]]'' episodes, including one in which they all shared their worst Thanksgiving memories. Some of these include losing body parts.
** Chandler in particular hates Thanksgiving because they remind him of his divorced parents and how they screwed up his childhood. It gets so bad that they have to prepare non-Thanksgiving food for him.
* Christmas and [[New Year Has Come|New Year]] are particularly bad holidays for Amaka Okoh in ''[[Tinsel]]''. When she's not being held hostage by a lunatic, she's in jail for murder.
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