44 Petty Holiday Disputes That Made Christmas Awkward

My dyslexic brain read 'prettiest squirrel' rather than 'pettiest quarrel', pretty disappointed now tbh.

My husband bought himself a new electric chainsaw two days ago. He has left the empty box in the dining room. I refuse to take it out so every meal time I make sure the box is on his dining chair so he has to move it to sit and eat. He still hasn’t taken it to the recycling bin. I think this box is going to be in the dining room for quite a while, at least until Saturday when we have guests coming over.

Edit: box update. I took inspiration from some of your ideas. Husband came in from work and put his phone down. When he was distracted I placed his phone in the chainsaw box. A while later he asked if I’d seen his phone. ‘In the box’ I replied. Now you’d think he’d ask what box but no, he knew! Box has been moved to the garage without a single vocal request from me. Small win, but I’ll take it.

Husband put clean clothes on top of the laundry basket. I put them in the washing machine. He then complained because his only clean jeans were wet.

He had it coming.

My MiL said matter-of-fact like “We’ll be staying over Christmas Eve so we can be with the girls (my daughters 6 & 2) in the morning. I said “Yeah naw,” as we do in part of the world because she just talks through everything, has strong opinions about everything. She looked at my wife and said “We already discussed it.” I said, “No we didn’t. We’ll see you for brunch in town with the rest of the family at 10:30.” My wife says “I said they could; sorry I didn’t speak to you about it.” While I felt a bit like an a*s, I wasn’t looking forward to anything about Christmas except that morning with just my girls. I said “You had your go at it; it’s our turn” and left the room. And Christmas morning was very nice and my wife said I could have been nicer about it but glad it was just us.

Not really christmas related but my partner informed me he had put some documents in the "shred pile" in my office.

We don't own a shredder.

The "shred pile" does not exist. He started the shred pile. Items to be shred was 0 before he placed the item, making it a shred pile of 1.

I asked him when he was intending to shred this shred pile and he looked at me like it hadn't occurred to him that, even if we did have a shredder, the shredding would need to eventually be done by someone (aka me).

Over Christmas I discovered the toilet rolls that are always put on the wrong way round were not an accident and actually intentional by my wife. Just sorting out the paperwork now.

Husband needed the power off to replace a plug socket whilst I was also trying to get on with some DIY (renovating my office with floor to ceiling built in storage made from scratch).

We get five hours of daylight and he needed the power off for three hours. To replace one plug socket (so he could have a USB plug socket on his side of the bed).

I need my office to work in and only had a set amount of time to complete it before starting work again but at least he can plug his USB straight into the wall!

I did two angry dog walks and still got snapped at for not being around when he was shouting for me.

We have the opposite. My mum asked my dad to turn the hob off. He's hard of hearing and walked out the room so I turned it off. Then unbeknown to me and mum some time soon after dad went and turned off the remaining "on" k**b on the cooker. So.... The meat ended up being off for about 45 mins before either of us noticed. We didn't tell Dad as he loves Christmas and he would've been so upset at the thought of "ruining it". Dinner wasn't late. We ended up eating on time for once and dad is none the wiser.
40 years married, about 43 together I think.

I've got a broken leg and have asked a few times that the toilet seat stays down to make it easier.

I've now resorted to sending photos of the toilet - seat up - with no additional commentary to the husband.

I don’t really drink hot drinks (I KNOW), so it’s only my wife who has cups of tea.

She gets a brand new mug every single time. In one day she used 8 mugs. I don’t know why she couldn’t rinse and reuse the first one and asked her this.

No answer given but I’m a jerk apparently.

For the past two years I asked him politely to take down the Christmas lights outside whilst the kids were at school on his day off. It was never done so the lights stayed up in the garden and every now and then I'd get a comment aimed at me about not putting them away, I'd then dig at him about him being asked and not doing it and be met with excuses. The lights would remain up all year round. This continued for 2 years.

Yesterday I went outside with the boxes and took them down. It took 8 minutes. 3 years of arguing for 8 minutes of work.

The wife has a habit of putting things on the bin, rather than literally opening it and putting them IN the bin. Yes, the same bin, literally just the other side of the lid. The recycling section is in the bottom half of the bin, and gets the same treatment.

Then she says it’s full, rather than empty it.

Then she will moan and empty it. So we get to the same end result, just with a massive argument in the middle.

I think the courts will give me at least 80% of the house based on just this alone.

I had an absolute meltdown on Christmas Day morning because the pastry brush I needed to egg wash my Wellington had been left in a sink of dirty water and had fallen to bits. Queue me shouting at my wife upstairs about where the other one was, she couldn't hear me so I lost it and starting hauling the entire contents of her baking cupboard out all over the kitchen floor.

I soon realised I was being utterly childish and pathetic and ended up apologising profusely. The stress of cooking something quite complex for Christmas Dinner just got to me.

My wife had a dream I wanted an open marriage. Was grumpy all day. I had a dream I was a Ghostbuster and was really happy all day.

Just constantly annoyed at each other for stepping in each others way in our tiny kitchen. Or coming in and stirring something unasked on the hob when the other is cooking. Basically we pretty much have a one person standing in the kitchen at a time rule now as otherwise we’ll end up murdering each other.

We cooked for 19 for Christmas dinner and it was, as imagined, a bit hectic.

My wife was doing the spuds, roasted in goose fat but we didn't have enough, and they weren't browning well - so my MiL picked up a bottle of oil and started liberally applying it to 7 trays of spuds. However she had picked up a nice white wine vinegar instead of oil. When I pointed this out she blamed me "for putting vinegar in an oil bottle" to which I responded "it''s the bottle it came in woman".

My ex actually wrote on the divorce paperwork that he disliked that I ate vegetables.

Not that I asked or expected him to eat vegetables, he just disliked seeing me eat them!!

She can't stack the dishwasher. It's like a lunatic has stacked it.

My wife had a dream I was having an affair, for two days she was grumpy because in her head I’d had an affair.

I think I’m owed an affair.

The bin men came on Christmas Eve. It was recycling, which was stuffed to the brim. I had work and husband was home with the two kids.

When I got home, they excitedly told me that the bin men had given them a Christmas chocolate lolly each. They were outside playing on our driveway most of the day, so were there to say hi when the bin lorry arrived. Husband said he thanked them, then had a nice chat with said bin men about Christmas plans etc before they moved on.

Cut to day after Boxing Day, I start thinking about clearing out some of the boxes and packets into our now empty recycling bin. Except it's not empty. It's still full. Not only full, overflowing.

Despite being reminded before I left, the thing practically overflowing, being outside at the time, watching the bin lorry pull up in our close, chatting to the bin men and accepting chocolate from them, he had in fact forgotten to pull the bin to the end of our driveway...

When I brought all this up, he said he forgot because 'y'know, Christmas'.