ah christmas time

I celebrated Christmas yesterday with my mom's side of the family. Christmas 2007 is officially over. It was a good time. It always amazes me how vastly different Christmas is between my dad's side and my mom's side of the family.

My dad's family is rather conservative, and everyone is very polite. Before dinner, we always pray. We all gather around in a room and stare at our hands while the host (it always seems to be the male's job to pray) thanks the good lord for blessing us with food and prays that our troops do their job and are kept safe. Then we eat and converse about jobs, remodeling homes, church trips, and other fun things like that. After dinner we exchange gifts and play organized games.

My mom's family, on the other hand, is conservative in more of a red-neck kind of way. You know the kind, they talk dirty and tell jokes, but god-forbid we let those democrats in the white house, and "faggot" is the favored insult to toss around. We never pray, we load our plates with the traditional Christmas food, and drink a beer. Dinner conversation consists of sex talk and chats about drinking too much and curing hangovers. Then, after dinner, we gather round to open gifts, continue drinking beer, and talk of getting drunk and laid.

It doesn't seem to matter how vastly different my families are. I feel somewhat out of place and uncomfortable in both settings. However, I love both families for who the are, but by the end of the day, I couldn't be more happy to return home to my liberal friends, curl up on the couch and watch logo.