We strive for the perfect Christmas but all too often life gets in the way. From food disasters to trips to A&E and random events completely beyond anyone’s control, sometimes Christmas Day just doesn’t follow the rules. But the lovely thing is, there’s memories to be made even from the tricky times. We caught up with some friends of The White Company to find out what happened the year that everything went wrong.

• “My mum has an amazing ability to make the best of everything. But we did have one particularly chilly Christmas in Scotland, with no power or water. We quickly decamped to my grandparents, realising we wouldn't get any turkey if we stayed.”
  
   
  Flora Shedden, baker and author, @florashedden
     
• “One Christmas Eve, we awoke at my parents’ house by a tidal creek in the Isle of Wight to find their living room had flooded, with the carpet soggy and squelchy. In the end, my father found an old sail in the garage; we spread it over the floor and toasted his sailing heritage with champagne.”
  
   
  Jane Knight, travel editor

• “My husband is the cook in our family – he’s brilliant and does a fabulous Christmas lunch that runs like clockwork without any panic. I am in charge of the Christmas pudding, but my approach is much more chaotic. A few years ago, I had clearly got carried away with the amount of alcohol that went into the pudding and when the time came to serve, it was still raw inside. Maybe not so unexpected from me, so it didn’t ruin the day.”
     
  Ali Heath, health writer and editor
     
• “There was the time Mum left the giblets in a plastic bag inside the turkey… perhaps that is what turned me into a late-onset vegetarian!”
     
  Anna Murphy, Fashion Director of The Times
     
• “In my New York years, my boyfriend (now husband) and I hosted ‘orphans' Christmas’ for whoever was left in the city. One year, Tim, who is typically an excellent cook, embarked on a vegetarian version of a chicken pot pie with an exotic ragout of wild mushrooms. For reasons I still can't quite fathom, he decided to make puff pastry from scratch which took millennia. Then the flimsy shelf in my barely used Manhattan oven collapsed, taking the pie with it. The exotic ragout had to be scraped off the oven floor. I don’t think we even made it through to pudding, but it was a very bonding and memorable occasion. Everyone got very drunk on vodka cocktails.”
     
  Sarah Bailey, International Editor-At-Large for Vogue Greece

• “Around 11pm on Christmas Day, my husband and I were enjoying a glass of wine when we heard an ear-piercing howl from upstairs. We sprinted up to discover our son, writhing in agony. It transpired that he’d been attempting to recreate the Strictly Come Dancing festive special, caught his foot in the carpet pile and dislocated his knee. Cue a a two-hour wait for the ambulance, hysteria, gas and air, a night at A&E and the rest of 2021 spent on crutches. The one silver lining? Our family got moved to the easy-access front row of the New Year’s Eve panto and, to everyone else’s delight, my husband got mercilessly targeted by the Ugly Sisters.”
     
  Lynne Hyland, beauty editor at Good Housekeeping and Red
     
• “We still joke about the Christmas my sister ‘went blind’ on Boxing Day. She was four and her eyesight was completely fine but she’d decided to tell my parents she couldn’t see. Obviously worried, they took her to A&E. We all waited in a packed emergency room for hours, only to be finally seen by the doctors and told that she’d been making the whole thing up. She’d had 20/20 vision all along.”
     
  Kimberley Fishwick, The White Company’s Senior Managing Editor

• ”The first Christmas present my partner Luke gave me was a silver bracelet, which… wasn’t to my taste. I remember opening the box and pretending to love it as I didn’t have the heart to tell him. I swiftly put it back in the box and put it to one side. We were a new couple so he didn’t question but 32 days later – having not seen me wear it once – he managed to return it and get a credit note, even though the refund date had passed. He’s never let me live that story down.”
     
  Debbie Le, Stylist and Digital Creator @debbielegrainer
     
• “A friend of ours - with four children - used to do all their shopping, in advance, at a smart London department store, getting it delivered to the house on Christmas Eve, ready to wrap and pop in stockings that night. One year, as she sat down to do the wrapping, she realised one of the bags had not been delivered, covering all of the youngest’s presents and half of the eldest’s. Cue frantic ringing of contact they had, even the local MP – to no avail. They had to wing it until Boxing Day, with a lot of tales about Santa having supply issues and elves having called in sick.”
     
  Octavia Lillywhite, The White Company’s Fashion and Lifestyle Editor