Tragedy, catastrophe, violence, destruction, heartbreak, soul-crushing loss: all things that Santa might bring you on December 25 which could be borne by plain bad luck any other day of the year. What goes around, can come around on Christmas Day. It just feels a lot worse then.

Temporal intrusions that overwhelm the Yuletide spell don't have to be totally unwelcome events. On Christmas Day in 800 AD Charlemagne (Charles the Great, King of the Franks) was crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by a grateful Pope Leo III. Charlemagne had restored the pope to power by putting down a rebellion that had forced the latter out of Rome.

Supposedly the title wasn't even on the great one's Christmas wish list, so it came as a total surprise. As an act of gratitude he then went on to forge the destiny of Europe.

William the Conqueror was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day in 1060, following the Battle of Hastings which completed the Norman conquest of England and began the process of turning the country into a consolidated national power.

History might adjudge those good things. It might, just as well, so adjudge the brutal execution of the equally brutal Nicolae Ceausescu, Communist ruler of Romania (1967-89), and his wife Elena immediately following a short and peremptory trial, by firing squad on Christmas Day 1989. But history might not get the concurrence of the Ceausescus on that adjudgment.

History does not record how Mikhail Gorbachev felt on giving up the reins of leadership of the Soviet Union on Christmas Day in 1991 and ultimately accepting its dissolution. He was cast aside basically by the leaders of the various republics whose positions, owing mainly to his political reforms (and some bad central economic policies), had grown to the point where their power superannuated Gorbachev's own. It couldn't have been a good day, and certainly not one of his better Christmases.

Vladimir Putin, for one, believes to this day the whole affair was a horrible mistake and one of the greatest disasters in Russian history.

The Battle of Trenton in 1776 made Christmas that year one of the best ever for George Washington and his colonial regulars. But it totally ruined the holiday for the Hessian mercenaries they surprised and defeated after crossing the Delaware in bitingly cold and inclement weather.

Ah yes, weather. Many consider it the crowning touch of a fantastical Christmas, a fresh blanket of new-fallen snow that transforms a dreary winter landscape into an all-white wonderland, sparkling like the Christmas cards one sends out to friends and loves ones each holiday season. But Mother Nature, just like Lady Luck, can have a way of running amok from time to time.

In 2013 a Christmas ice storm that began on December 20 and continued through Boxing Day (Dec. 26) plunged hundreds of thousands of people in Ontario, Canada into prolonged cold and darkness and brought travel to a grinding halt throughout the region. By the time the freezing rain finally let up, almost a foot of ice had encased the worst-hit areas throughout the region.

People made do with generators and other heating methods, not always accounting for fumes. At least five people died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

An 1888 Christmas storm killed more than 20 people and left millions in Ontario and Quebec without power for weeks.

In 2001, Buffalo was the bullseye for a Christmas storm that dropped more than five feet of snow over five days. Homes and highways were blanketed. Travel including public transportation ground to a halt, forcing the city to declare a state of emergency.

Perhaps Ontario and Buffalo, being where they are, could be thought to get the winter's wrath they deserve. But Tucson, Arizona? On Christmas Day 1987 the city woke up to what northern climes might consider a laughably piddling four inches of white stuff. But while Arizona gets snow in some of its parts, Tucson isn't one of them.

With no snow-clearing equipment to speak of anywhere in the city, that "dusting" was enough to shut down sixty miles of local roadways until the snow could melt away.

One of the worst holiday storms on anyone's records was the Great Christmas Flood of 1717, which hit the coastal area of the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia on Christmas night. At least 14,000 people are believed to have died in this massive catastrophe, when a huge tempest at sea spawned storm surges of five feet or more along the coast of Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.

No coastal area was spared. Everywhere dyke breaches were followed by wide flooding in the flat country, resulting in the drowning of large numbers of livestock along with some 9,000 souls. In East Frisia 900 houses were washed away completely.

Survivors remained unaware of the fate of missing family members for an unbearable length of time. Of 284 persons missing from Werdum in East Frisia, 32 had been found the following February. As an epilogue, two days after the flood came hard frost and snow.

In the low-lying Netherlands whole villages with thousands of homes were swallowed up by the sea, along with huge swaths of land. For the Netherlands in particular, it was one of the dreariest chapters in the story of the long back-and-forth battle the Dutch waged with the sea.

In 1913, at a Christmas Eve party in Calumet, Michigan, 59 children and 14 adults were killed. This time weather wasn't a factor. The Ladies' Auxiliary of the Western Federation of Miners was holding a party for the families of miners who had been on strike against the C&H Copper Mining Company for the previous six months, but evil intent intruded.

The party was on the second floor of Calumet's Italian Hall; the only way in and out was via a steep stairway. Children had gathered around the stage as presents were passed out — for many, it would be the only gift they'd get that year.

A man wearing a badge labelled "Citizens Alliance," an anti-strike group organized by employers, opened the door at the bottom of the staircase and yelled up, "Fire!" In the chaos that ensued, people rushed down the stairs only to find the door blocked from the outside. Children and adults were trampled and then suffocated beneath the throng of bodies trying to escape.

A woman who realized she was going to die lifted her baby over her head. The baby was found alive, still clutched in his dead mother's upraised hands.

No culprits were ever identified. Nobody was prosecuted or even arrested. In 1941, Woody Guthrie recorded a song about the tragedy, called 1913 Massacre.

Battlin' Billy Martin was killed on Christmas Day 1989. Martin, who served five tours as manager of the New York Yankees fighting with his boss George Steinbrenner, and various others, died in a low-speed, single-vehicle accident during an ice storm near his farm in Port Crane, north of Binghamton, New York. He was almost home.

Martin was riding shotgun in his own pickup truck driven by William Reedy, a longtime friend. The truck skidded off an icy country road, slid 300 feet down an embankment and came to rest at the foot of Mr. Martin's own driveway. He was thrown through the windshield and suffered a broken neck.

Reedy acknowledged the pair had been drinking all afternoon but said ice and no guardrails played a bigger part in Martin's death. Nonetheless, he received a DUI citation.

More than 6,500 people attended the funeral including Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, Ron Guidry, Willie Randolph, Don Mattingly, Yankees Owner George Steinbrenner and former President Richard Nixon.

Interment was at Gates of Heaven cemetery in Hawthorne, N.Y., where Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were buried. One day after he died, the IRS filed liens against Martin's estate to recover $86,137 in back taxes.

Christmas has often been unkind to man's organized bellicose aspirations, perhaps the judgment of the nature's God on mankind's bright idea. During the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, the Ethiopians set the Italians back on their heels in 1935 with a highly successful Christmas offensive, supposedly inflicting casualties topping 3,000. Merry Christmas. Mussolini was enraged and regained the initiative by threatening a lot of senior officers and dropping mustard gas on the Ethiopians on Dec. 26. Right back atcha.

Christmas day 1940 saw a running fight in the mid-Atlantic between the German cruiser Admiral Hipper and escorts from an Allied convoy. The action began early Christmas morning when the German vessel steamed out of the gloom to shell a troop ship. Sixteen were killed before the surface raider was driven off by HMS Berwick and the carriers Argus and Furious.

While retreating east, the Admiral Hipper next crossed paths with the cargo vessel SS Jumna. The German warship crippled the transport leaving more than 110 survivors bobbing in the freezing ocean. All perished.

On Christmas Day 1941, a 12,000-man British garrison on Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese. The capitulation capped 17 days of fierce fighting that killed 2,000 Allied troops and 3,000 civilians. The defeat ushered in a four-year occupation marked by murder and widespread rape, and is still remembered as the "Black Christmas" in Hong Kong.

In the summer of 1942 German forces had surrounded Stalingrad. Or so they thought. By Christmas their supplies nearly exhausted, the starving Axis troops took to slaughtering their own horses for meat. As many as 12,000 animals were butchered and eaten. All included, the Axis forces suffered 850,000 total casualties (wounded, killed, captured). Germany never retook the initiative in the East

In 1944, Hitler's 11-day old Ardennes Offensive was finally running out of steam; the turning point came on Christmas day when British and American troops halted the 2nd Panzer Division on the banks of the Meuse River. While the German onslaught had penetrated 60 miles into Allied territory, the Third Reich had lost 3,500 men and more than 400 vehicles. Three days later, the Berlin called off the attack.

Peace between North Vietnam and the United States seemed as elusive as ever as 1972 drew to a close. Yet President Richard Nixon hoped to force a speedy conclusion to the stalled negotiations with his controversial 1972 Christmas Bombing campaign over Hanoi.

Codenamed Operation Linebacker II, the mammoth air assault pounded the communist capital pounded with more than 200 B-52 Stratofortresses and 2,000 strike aircraft for 11 days beginning on Dec. 18. In all, more than 20,000 tons of bombs were dropped, making it one of the largest air campaigns in history. Air defenses claimed nearly 30 U.S. warplanes. Vietnamese resistance was so stiff, many American aircrews refused to fly their missions.

The bombing raids, which resulted in the deaths of at least 1,600 civilians, drew worldwide condemnation, with some comparing them to genocide. Despite this backlash, Hanoi returned to the bargaining table in the New Year and by Jan. 27, 1973, the two nations had reached an accord. Peace in our time, all because of Christmas.

The most noteworthy Christmas Day battle of World War I was one that never took place. In 1914, a series of widespread but unofficial ceasefires broke out along the Western Front in the week leading up to the holiday, German and British soldiers crossed lines to exchange seasonal greetings, toasts and talk. In some places, men from both sides gathered on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to mingle and exchange food and mementos and sing carols. Soccer games even broke out, providing one of the most enduring images of "The Christmas Armistice."

The following year, such unofficial holiday truces were discouraged by orders from the high commands on both sides. The Generals were determined to prevent a recurrence of such fraternization, seeing it as a morale-weakening influence in the long run.

Nobody really learned too much, it seems, from the "Great War." We didn't even learn to not fight another one. And there is no record of any Christmas truces getting declared during World War II. Some things are too important for distractions like peace on earth and good will toward men.

This holiday season try to keep in mind the Christmas present Clarence the Angel gave George Bailey. "You see, George, you've really had a wonderful life." Don't fret so over what you haven't gained and be thankful for what you haven't lost. A lot of times, you come out ahead if you can just hold on to what you've got.