Christmas, famiglia style

So.

It will likely come as no surprised that my family is… intense. People should be given materials (audiovisual and written) before they come to visit, to allow themselves to acclimate to their surroundings in advance. Many an unwarned friend has come away, shaking their head in a very dazed and confused manner. Evil Corp Ex, though he had met all the members of my family individually, kind of left shell shocked on his first visit with the clan in general. As we boarded the bus back to the city, I asked him if he was OK. “Sure” he said. “There’s just, you know, FIVE of you.”

Well… right.

People who are unprepared for us are sometimes blown away by our dinners, because it turns into a cabaret/variety show/Follies. Evil whore no. 1 called it the “MA's fucked up family universe”. Whether it is speech pieces, Daily Show routines, songs from the radio or from someone’s a cappella group, dramatic monologues and the occasional dream reenactment (my brother is forever banned from doing these, due to the “Ice Cream Incident”. Nuff said), there is always something going on. Something loud. Something boisterous. Something you’re going to get pulled into. When we were growing up (eff it, when I’m home now) dinner time is REQUIRED. Even in the years in high school that in all my teenage wisdom I thought my family was the bat shit craziest thing ever, I still showed up for dinner every night, to listen to my mom tell droll jokes, my brother go on and on about this or that debate tournament, and to sing along (and in harmony!) with my sister, while my father recited “Chi canta a tavolo e fischia a letto è un asino perfetto”. In English – he was calling us jackasses.

Truth? We are.

Christmas is no different. Every year we all get together and decorate our tree. Like many families, we “children” get ornaments every year, and there are VERY specifically delineated rules about how we put these “annual” ornaments on the tree. We then do an extensive performance of the twelve days of Christmas and Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.

Like I said. Intense.

And THIS SATURDAY is our day this year. Usually we would have all gone home a week ago, but my sister had some pretty extensive finals PLUS two inches of ice covered my parents’ road, so it was a no go. But I’m raring up – practicing my part in the twelve days, gearing up for the fight about who gets to go first in the ornament parade, and memorizing all the names of the reindeer.

I guess we are pretty fucked up.

But I love them. And it’s Christmas! So go ahead, I’m giving you permission (no… I’m REQUIRING you), go ahead. Canta a tavolo. Fischia a letto. Be a jackass!