Hot Like Ebola!!!

Crap. I’m gonna have to go to the grandparents’ again for Christmas. I thought I was done with that, but apparently the fates enjoy mocking me.
Christmas with my family actually starts at Thanksgiving. My mom will get up at approximately 3:30 a.m., which means I will wake up too, since the only place left to sleep is in the hallway. Being the “kid” of twenty, my room is the first to get usurped by the visiting family. I will stumble into the kitchen in my tank top and sweatpants to get the turkey prepared so it can start cooking. Every year the turkey is bigger. Last year, we had to splice together two roasting pans. This year, we will probably have to use the kiddie pool. Or maybe the kayak. I will make the stuffing, reserving a cup or two with no giblets so I can eat some too. I hate giblets. Then, I will wash my hands and walk across the kitchen to make the cheese platter. Oh yeah, I always forget the first time I make the platter that I need to use the special “dairy plates.”
My relatives will start pouring in, from upstairs and through the front door, right about when I start steaming the asparagus. This I actually can do and I have since I was thirteen. Uncle Stuart will already be drunk, with Uncle Clay following fast on his heels. I’m pretty sure that Uncle Stan is still in jail, thankfully, so he won’t be there to put my brother and sister back in therapy.
My great-great-uncle Bob will say the blessing over the food, and everyone will line up to get their portion. No one ever seems to know which way the line goes, which will produce a lot of “Veyismir!” And “Move it, schlemiel!”
Most of the family will eat out on the porch, where they can exclaim loudly to the passing yachts and speedboats on the harbor. Those poor, unsuspecting passersby will look at us like we are some awkward exhibit at the nature preserve.
After the meal (where the monolithic turkey will always be too dry), my family will usher in the Jewish version of the presentation of the gifts. Our family has this tradition of giving each other ornaments at Thanksgiving. It’s like a sporting event, and my grandparents have to win. Every year, they try to get each of us a more extravagant, technologically advanced tchotchke. I am a special challenge, as the token Christian in the family, and the grandparents are endlessly fascinated by my desertion of the family faith, as my dad so gently puts it. Last year, they gave me a manger that flashes on and off and plays “O come Emmanuel.” My boyfriend unfortunately told them that he likes guitar. From this year on, he will get some instrument or another. It doesn’t even matter if it’s a guitar or not . . . or even a stringed instrument. They’ll probably give him a piano ornament. Or a tuba. That’s basically a guitar.
As the inebriated and tryptophan-sedated relatives file out the door, I will be expected to hug them and bestow some genuine compliment. I seem to be the only one in my family to be able to find something nice to say about all of them, or at least the only one who ever let on that I could. So Lynn will get a “you should come out to the barn!,” and Aunt Lily will hear a “those are festive socks!” I will then, with my brother, clean up the dinner while keeping my grandmother from trying to help.
Christmas is just like this, except that there will be a skyscraper tree in the middle of the sitting room with 70 or so pounds of trimmings. My brother and I used to get paid fifty bucks for decorating their house, but since we moved blessedly far away, the duty falls on the shoulders of my sister and her husband. And they don’t get paid. Mwahahaha. And she thinks she gets the upper hand since she gets to sleep in my room.
Since my family is Jewish, Christmas means that we all gather together and worship the pagan santa, and thank God for a capitalistic economy where bail-bonds, the family business, can thrive. I will get a pile of gifts that are one-half school supplies, one-third horse books, and one-sixth sweatshirts with yarn horses all over them.
Matt doesn’t understand why I was so eager to go his grandparents’ in North Carolina. He loves my family, with their loudness, their American Yiddishness, the obnoxious way they love me even though I have defected from them in every way possible. Go figure.

:: submitted by Jenevieve, 6:23 AM
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