The holidays – Thanksgiving, Christmas, Chanukkah, or any time we choose to gather as a family – are meant to be happy, festive occasions. We drink wine, hand out gifts, pass pieces of turkey to the family dog under the table. We don silly sweaters or matching pyjamas. But sometimes, things go wrong.

The cliché is a drunk uncle spouting conspiracy theories at the dinner table, but that’s the least of it. Those of us who have experienced last-minute visits to hospital, parents walking in on us at inopportune moments or turkey-induced house fires know that the most wonderful time of the year can easily turn into our worst nightmare. On the plus side, these moments make great stories that will delight and horrify your friends for years to come.

In that spirit, we’ve gathered a few of our favourite gruesome and hilarious anecdotes from the MR PORTER family far and wide so you can have a bit of a laugh at our expense. Happy holidays, everyone!

I hadn’t really eaten anything all day, so by the time the turkey was out of the oven and resting, I was incredibly hungry. When my mother was dealing with something else – typically, no one else in my family was contributing anything, but still complaining about when dinner would be ready – I peeled off a gigantic piece of turkey skin and stuffed it in my mouth.

It was an obscenely large piece of skin and extremely rude of me to have removed it from the bird, the equivalent of eating half the crispy parts of an order of fried chicken you were sharing with a group. It got stuck mid-swallow, cutting off my airflow.

Because I didn’t want everyone to know that I’d taken the skin (I’d been planning on blaming my brother) and now, as a result, I was choking, I just turned around and prayed I could clear my airway before I passed out. Obviously, everyone noticed I was facing a wall and grunting, but it turned out nobody knew the Heimlich manoeuvre, so I reached into my throat and pulled out the turkey skin.

I did wind up going to hospital that holiday, but it was for an unrelated head wound, which, I want to point out, was my brother's fault.

Ms Anna Peele, contributor

There was the time we had my whole family over for Christmas lunch. My husband wanted to shake things up a bit, so he beckoned my seven-year-old nephew over and said, “Hey, Matty, what’s the worst swear word you know?” thinking he might get an s-bomb. Matty puffed himself up to his full four-foot nothing, stared hubby straight in the eye and bellowed, “C*******  w*******er”.

When Matty’s grandpa had regained the power of speech, he asked Matty where he had learnt such a term. “I got the first word from Mummy and heard the second at school, but put them together all by myself,” he said.

Ms Annabel Brog, Talent Editor

I started to take an interest in cooking when I was in middle school, right around the time we got Food Network on cable. I’d spend my days after school trying to recreate whatever it was I saw Emeril make the night before, rarely with an actual recipe in hand.

After making a few not-terrible things, I considered myself an Iron Chef of sorts. That gave me the culinary hubris to take on the task of making gravy for our Christmas dinner. Cut to an abysmal attempt at making stock from turkey giblets that turned into a bland, scummy tide water, getting the proportions of flour and butter for the roux all wrong (unsure how I screwed up a one-to-one ratio), then scorching it and, finally, whisking furiously while my long-suffering mother juggled casseroles around me only to end up with a lumpy, mealy mess.

It was unsalvageable and our beautifully roasted turkey and mashed potatoes were served naked and gravy-less. One might consider gravy nothing but a glorified condiment, but you really don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

Mr John Lockett, Contributor

My earliest memory of Christmas is also my most traumatic. We spent the day with family on my father’s side and I can still picture their tree, which was as impressive and expertly decorated as something you might see in a department store.

I also remember unwrapping my main present, a Corgi diecast Batmobile, with the tiny figures of the slightly paunchy Mr Adam West-era Batman behind the wheel and his plucky sidekick, Mr Burt Ward, in the passenger seat. At least that’s where they were for most of Christmas Day, right up until the boot of the family car flew open on the drive home and our presents were scattered all over a rain-soaked dual carriageway, at night, with cars flying past at high speed.

To my father’s credit, he managed to rescue some items from the hard shoulder, including the mangled remains of the Batmobile, complete with the decapitated bodies of the Caped Crusaders, still in their seats.

Mr Dan Davies, Editorial Director

I grew up in a very left-wing household (trade unions, Greenham Common protests, no South African fruit, etc). As well as that worldview, I inherited a deep, unironic love of Christmas.

Mentally, Ms Quirk Snr and I start cueing up the festivities around July each year. Which makes it all the more strange that on Christmas Day 1990, she announced that we were going into London for “something different”. My visions of festive merriment evaporated as we reached Zone 1 and I realised we were attending a vigil outside the US Embassy against the ongoing Gulf War.

It was a markedly brutal winter and, as we lurked, turning blue and with only a few frostbitten Quakers for company, the Christmas cheer was decidedly thin. An unspoken agreement was reached that subsequent years would be more traditional – excessive decorations, an open fire, a multi-stage meal – and absolutely nobody watching the Queen’s speech.

Mr Justin Quirk, Contributor

Years ago, my mom, sister and I all went to my mom’s partner’s house, deep in rural Connecticut, for Thanksgiving. He was a bit of a gourmand and took great pride in making the perfect turkey. My mom is a skilled baker and had slaved over her tarts for the day. A lot of work was going into the creation of a feast.

While we were waiting for dinner, my sister and I were horsing around in the kitchen with the cook’s three dogs, one of whom was a rather serene old man. My sister playfully approached the old man from behind, straddling him like a horse (we’re a cat family), which clearly startled him.

It all happened really quickly, but the next moment my sister was gasping with her hand at her throat, looking a little glassy-eyed. When she removed her hand, she revealed that she had lost a chunk of her neck to a dog nip. We all rushed to the ER where we waited for hours before she was stitched up. The worst part? The turkey was ruined.

Ms Lili Göksenin, Senior Editor

We have some beloved, but slightly odd, traditions in my family. One of them involves using raffle tickets for Christmas presents. It’s a complex and intricate procedure, but for the purposes of this tale, all you need to know is that, very occasionally and despite everyone’s best intentions, the raffle tickets get mixed up. Cut to a Christmas about a decade ago, when my mother unwrapped what she thought was a gift from her father, but was a set of lingerie very much not intended for her.

Anonymous (the writer is not at liberty to reveal their name due to the sensitive nature of the story)

After the turkey and trimmings, ’tis a Rookwood family tradition to douse the Christmas pud in brandy, dim the lights, strike a match and watch the blue flame dance as the first ceremonial slice is cut. Only one year, when I was about 14, it didn’t catch alight.

Another match was struck. Nothing. More Courvoisier. Nope, still nothing. Hmm. The lights went back up and the inquest began.

Rewind the footage several months and you’ll spot me raiding the family drinks trolley for some behind-the-cricket-pavilion boozing from my new pewter hip flask, because nothing says adolescent affectation quite like swigging neat liquor with a metallic aftertaste, amiright? I’d topped up the brandy bottle with some apple juice so no one would notice, intending somehow to procure a proper replacement, but then forgot all about it – until the figgy pudding arrived at the table. No flame.

My younger brother got the blame. To this day, I have lived with the shame. I still wince at the merest whiff of brandy.

Mr Dan Rookwood, Contributor

There must have been a sniper in the trees. That could be the only explanation, we said, for how hard and fast my mother went down. One moment she was waddling across the ice like the rest of us, sherry-drunk and blinded by the snow, the next she was star-fished on the deck in her bright-red puffer jacket.

It was Christmas morning and the whole gang was together for once: siblings and aunties, cousins and kids. The turkey was sweating, the spuds were a-trembling. My cousin Julia had just started rolling spliffs at the back door.

What I’m saying is, there was a lot at stake. Did that influence our insistence that Mum, once we’d carried her to the sofa and got her leg up on a pouffe, didn’t need a trip to A&E? That it was nothing a bag of ice wouldn’t fix? That she might even – whisper it – be putting it on a little?

Hard to tell, but we plied her with gin all day anyway and got on with our merriment. The doctor’s verdict on Boxing Day was stark. Her leg broken in two places. Eight months to heal. And a lifetime of guilt for the rest of us.

Mr Sam Parker, Contributor