Crappy Holidays - Television Tropes & Idioms

It's the least wonderful time of the year!

The holidays are a time of happiness, togetherness, and fun right? Wrong! They are an awful time of the year that drains your money, time, and patience.

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 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 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.

Related (often extreme) tropes are Twisted Christmas, Soapland Christmas (a subtrope specifying both Christmas and Soap Opera), and Horror Doesn't Settle for Simple Tuesday, all for unusually sinister experiences. See also The Grinch for characters who openly hate Christmas in particular, and Anti Christmas Song for an entire musical genre built around the Yuletide form of this.

For the other definition of "holiday", compare Busman's Holiday or Horrible Camping Trip.

Examples:

Commercials

There's a Target commercial wherein a cheerful hausfrau type is decorating cakes, and describing how much she looks forward to the Black Friday sale, and then she goes on to describe her other holiday preparations, culminating in declaring, "I haven't slept for THREE DAYS!" (cue insane laughter)

Film

The basic plot of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. (Then It Got Worse.)
Home for the Holidays has Holly Hunter going home to spend Thanksgiving with her dysfunctional family. After getting fired from her job.

Literature

There's a scene in 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!. The main character hates Christmas so much he decides to ruin it for everyone else. He failed, and in that failure he finds the true meaning of the holiday.

Live-Action 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 trapped in a gas station, during a blizzard, on Christmas Eve/Christmas Morning, hunted by mercenaries, outnumbered, and delivering a freaking baby.
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 the Middle, pretty much without fail.
- Ditto for The Middle.
Most holiday episodes of 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 from the Sun, about their first Thanksgiving on Earth:
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 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 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.
- Angela Dede doesn't fare any better.
Adam 12 had one where the officers were trying to help a poor family by getting them some gifts after theirs were stolen-only to have the gifts stolen when the car they were in was swiped. There's also a drunk driving incident.

Music

The Arrogant Worms song 'The Christmas Song'. And some of the other songs on their 'Christmas Turkey' CD, which is basically a collection of AntiChristmasSongs.
The song "The 12 Pains Of Christmas"
Holidays in the Sun by The Sex Pistols - "A cheap holiday in other people's misery."

Western Animation

On one episode of Hey Arnold!, both Helga and Arnold complain on how their families ruin the Thanksgiving Day, and decide to leave their homes and go to Mr. Simmons' house expecting him to have a perfect celebration, it turned out his Thanksgiving Day was even worse.
Averted in South Park, in which Christmas in Fire and Brimstone Hell is actually really enjoyable.
Ironically subverted in the Phineas and Ferb Christmas Episode. Given Dr. Doofenshmirtz's Affably Evil nature and his history of sadistically tragicomic and consistently crappy childhood experiences, everyone expects him to hate Christmas. It turns out he honestly has no problem with it and was one of the few times in his childhood that "was always fine. It wasn't great but it wasn't terrible either."
- Turns out that he hates every other holiday, too. Every one, including Flag Day and Mardi Gras. Explained in song!
Ironically, one of the most beloved Christmas Specials, A Charlie Brown Christmas, is mostly about how the main character is depressed during the holidays. "I know everyone doesn't like me. Why do we have to have a holiday season to emphasize it?"