Seven Sisters, One Brother, and Religious Holiday Incongruity
One of my favorite holiday traditions is paradoxically creating and breaking tension at family gatherings by making inappropriate comments, then watching my sisters and their families cringe, and then eventually crack up laughing. With 7 older sisters, sometimes the “little brother” in me can’t help but enjoy a bit of wicked fun. Strictly juvenile shit like dropping the F-bomb amidst the pre-meal blessing. Luckily, they all have a great sense of humor, and are extremely tolerant of my brand of wit, which most people find difficult to appreciate. What makes it even funnier is that through the years they have become more conservative and more religious-even born again, while I, on the other hand, have become more batshit leftist and wholly irreverent.
For example, it begins with the little things, like when I persist in removing their beloved Christ from Christmas, pronouncing the holiday as Xmas (ex-mass).
And then, observing that my sister went a bit overboard in the volume of prezzies for her kids (think Dudley Dursley’s 11th birthday), I pointed out “if three gifts were good enough for your saviour, why so many more for your kiddos? Are yours more deserving than the son of God?!” After comparing the relative value of gold and frankincense, I broke into Monty Python scene from the Life of Brian. Without skipping a beat, my Scottish brother-in-law joined in with thick Pythonesque falsetto,
“don’t bother so much about the myrrh next time... what is myrrh anyway?
“ It’s a balm.”
*screams* “A BOMB?!”
When one sister gave another a large wallhanging with the scripture quote, “As for our house, we will serve the Lord,” my son asked what it said. When his aunt read it to him, my boy (never wanting to be outdone) replied “Me and MY dad serve the Lord too! Don’t we dad?” A hush falls, and twenty sets of eyes turn on me as I say, “We sure do son, WE just don’t feel the need to advertise it.” OOoohhhh!
This is the same sister who I had to thank earlier for teaching my son how to pray. After a recent sleepover with his cousins at her house he came home a bit confused and anxious about exactly when and how God was going to kill him in his sleep. Apparently they drilled the fearmongering “Now I lay me down to sleep...”(aka "Enter Sandman") prayer into him. I made a point during dinner to sincerely thank her for showing him that their religion was based on fear. She didn’t get it, so I elaborated:
*in a booming Godvoice* “Believe in me and love me, or spend eternity in HELL!”
*meekly* “Thankyou Lord, for all those... options.”
I could go on and on with this, (there is a whole separate archive of dinnertable incest double-entendres for another entry) but you get the picture. And like I said before, there's enough love and sense of humor that we mostly laugh. It beats fighting.
Family. Holidays. Good times.