From catastrophic fires to men pulling guns on picnickers, central Victoria has seen some dark days over the festive season.

We've pulled together three of the worst ones we could find from 19^th and early 20^th century editions of the Bendigo Advertiser.

Let's hope you remember your 2023 Christmas period more fondly than people did in these years:

"Some commotion" was caused on a train in 1908 when a slightly drunk young man drew his revolver and threatened to blow people's brains out if they didn't keep quiet.

The man was among six who had caught a "picnic train" at Castlemaine into Bendigo on Boxing Day and spent their first half-hour drinking and singing.

Things took a turn for the worst soon after Ravenswood, when one of them pointed a loaded gun and threatened several people on board.

"Two of the girls [who had been threatened] became terrified, and signified their intention of jumping out of the moving train by throwing both doors open," the Addy reported several days later.

A guard on the train saw the doors fly open and immediately hit the train's brakes, bringing it to a standstill.

The girls stayed on the train only because they were allowed to move to another carriage.

Word was sent ahead and police were waiting at the Bendigo train station when the service arrived.

The man insisted the gun had been a toy revolver someone had found on a seat, and that he had never touched it.

He denied removing six cartridges from the gun. Police searched the carriage and could not find it.

Their suspect claimed someone else had thrown it out the window while the train was in motion.

Police allowed him to move on.

A blaze that broke out around 3am on Christmas Day, 1857 quickly soon became the most destructive in the short history of Bendigo [then known as "Sandhurst"].

It was terrifying not only because of the scale of destruction but the time it took for people to scramble to help.

"The fact is, everybody seemed for the first quarter of an hour to be in a kind of stupor, hardly knowing what to do, or whether to make any effort at all to contend against a calamity which seemed overwhelming or irresistible," the Advertiser editorialised the next day.

At least 12 premises were destroyed or damaged in the fire, a number of which were not insured.

To read more about the fire, click here.

A town councillor got more than he bargained for when he suggested civic business should not be done under the influence of alcohol, during a stormy meeting days before Christmas in 1877.

Cr James Mouat had stood at the tail-end of a marathon council sitting to decry councillors' decision to accept the bill for some bottles of champagne for a gathering of ex-mayors.

It triggered hours of "remarks, 'confessions' and angry interjections" from councillors.

One councillor went as far as to claim it was typical of Mouat to take any luxuries on offer at council functions and later - once the council was ready to sign off on the bill - to "protest against it on the score of wasteful extravagance", the Addy reported.

Mouat at first refused to back down, saying he would not have drunk so much champagne if he had known the council, not the ex-mayors, would foot the bill.

He begrudgingly withdrew his remarks after half-an-hour when councillors threatened to reprimand him, but the damage was done.

The scandal dragged on through Christmas and into the new year as Eaglehawk's council became the widespread butt of jokes.

Things were not helped by Mouat getting into a very public semantic spat with the Addy over whether he had said he was drunk or merely under the influence of alcohol at the gathering of ex-mayors.

An early report had quoted him stating he had gotten "intoxicated" at the gathering of ex-mayors, much to his shame.

Mouat insisted that was a mischaracterisation.

The matter reared its head at multiple council meetings in the month that followed, exasperating a mayor who wanted to move on.