A friend of mine and I (we are both Aussies) had been staying at my Grandma's house in a rural village in UK and were trying to make our way back to London on Boxing Day. The fact that it was Boxing Day meant that no buses were running, so we started sticking our thumbs out to try and hitch a lift to the nearest town's train station. As you would expect, picking up two 19 year old blokes in the middle of nowhere was not an attractive proposition to your average passerby.

Eventually a guy comes along and picks us up. Tells us he hitched all the way across Europe back in the day so he empathized with us. Says he's on the way to pick up his son (our age) from work, a department store that happened to be on the way to the station.

His son gets into the car, understandably pretty bemused as to why his dad has brought two random stragglers with him!

We get to the station only to find that it's closed, because, yes, it's Boxing Day and trains weren't running either (we hadn't really thought this through). Guy says:

"Don't worry lads, all the family are around ours for Christmas dinner. My brother lives in West London so he can give you a ride there at the end of the night."

So we found ourselves, two foreign students, invited to a complete stranger's Christmas dinner party. We all had so much fun and drank so much that we completely abandoned the London idea and went back to my Grandma's at the end of the night.

And the kid who was our age that got picked up from work? He ended up being my Best Man when I got married 15 years later. True story!

This kind of reminds me of my brother's first trip to Taiwan.

This was in the 1980s. (Before cellphones.) The guy who was supposed to pick him up didn't show up because his motorcycle broke down. And couldn't get it fixed because it was Chinese New Year.

My brother arrived, not speaking any Chinese, surrounded by people who didn't speak any English. Who were having the biggest party that my brother had ever seen, and kept giving him food and inviting him places! He had absolutely NO idea what was going on!

After a few days of this, the person who was supposed to meet him finally managed to arrive, and my brother was hooked. Spent most of the next two decades in Taiwan.

Wonderful story!

As a Brit, I feel Xmas meal is the one time when you might see new faces around the table as we make an effort to ensure nobody is eating alone.

Growing up it was not unusual for members of the local community to join us if they faced Xmas alone.

Wild how life sometimes compresses decades into a single afternoon

does couchsurfing count? in poland trains are running on christmas, but i missed a connection and i was stuck in warsaw on chistmas eve. looked up hosts on couchsurfing which take guests without prior notice and found myself enjoying christmas dinner with a polish family.

That's absolutely amazing.