My Christmas Gifts

Each and every year, no matter how much I protest, my family always buys me clothing. I can't tell you how many times I have received some kind of hideous knitted sweater that is 10 times the size of me with some kind of gold-foiled flower on the bosom. Since I am about a foot taller than anyone in my household, everyone thinks that makes me morbidly obese and buys me enormous clothing.

“Oh, Stephie, ve just got it a few sizes bigger in case you need to grow into it,” they always claim.

I’m 25. The only thing that’s growing is my hatred of knitted sweaters.

Growing up, Grandma always made me wear ugly sweaters no matter how huge or moth-ball-smelling they were. Of course, I had to wear them on top of itchy, probably expensive, imported, hand-embroidered Hungarian undershirts. To this day, she still comes up behind me, lifts my shirt, and screams, "A Vese! Ing! Ing!" (Her Kidneys! Undershirt! Undershirt!) She would always say, "You're kidneys are exposed, you are going to catch your death!" Last time I checked, my kidneys were still inside of my body, especially since I don't recall ever waking up in a bathtub full of ice.

One year, in an effort to protect my kidneys, Nagymama actually bought me a pair of flowery underwear that must have been size 87. These things were so freaking huge that I actually pulled them over my clothing and up past my chest. I started to strut around the house and sing Madonna songs as both of my cousins laughed hysterically.

Nagymama came over with a sober look on her face. She grabbed me by the arm, pulled me down and said, “Stephie…you’re supposed to wear dat UNDERNEATH your clothing.”

Thanks for the clarification, granny. And Merry Christmas, everyone! Protect your kidneys.

Photo by Michael Bretherton

Anyu's Christmas Gift

No matter how hard I look for "the perfect gift," every year my mother opens her present, make a sour face, and says, “Oh, is dis from the Dollar Store?”

“No, Mom, they don’t sell 24K gold necklaces at the Dollar Store, but you keep looking.”

She then looks at me suspiciously. “Did somevon just gif dese to you and you’re givink dem to me?”

“No, Anyu, I just bought them online last week. Wanna see the receipt?”

“Oh, my God, you didn’t buy dem on Dah Ebay did you? Are these used? I don’t vant to catch AIDs…”

"No, actually, I bought them off some diseased hobo on the street corner for $5. He gave them to me for a great price - all I needed to do was give him my social security number and your maiden name. Pretty good deal, huh?"

This is when I usually get dirty looks. My mother doesn't appreciate the full range of my sarcasm.

Last year, out of sheer frustration and lack of time, I simply printed a photo of myself and framed it. To be honest, it gave me a weird sense of relief to give her the picture because it featured a photo of me in Japan. I’ve been wanting to tell her that I went to Japan to visit a friend, but I think the sheer shock of telling her that I have boarded a plane might send her into cardiac arrest. I’m sure one day I’ll just have to buy her a nice bottle of wine and pull out the slide show:

“Mom…here’s a picture of me on a horse.”

“Ah!”

“And here’s a picture of me in the ocean. In Japan.”

“AHH!!”

“…And here’s a picture of me in Colorado, meeting my father and his brand new wife for the first time.”

“OH, STEPHIE, NOOOO!”

“Yeah, I know, right? He’s already been married like four other times…”

(At this point I would probably realize that my mother has exploded into a fiery pile of ash.)

So, to keep it simple and alleviate some of the guilt I have been feeling for lying to my mom about traveling, I gave her the Japan photo (Okay, I didn't mention that the photo was from Japan, but hey, at least I'm trying.)

Go figure, for the first time in my life, she freaking LOVED it.

"Wow, look at dis beautiful picture! I haf to show dah people at church...you're actually dressed up so you don't look like a man!"

I guess I'll take that as a compliment.

And you wanna know the most satisfying part of that gift? I bought that frame at the Dollar Store.

Photo by Lawrence

The Christmas Cards

My cousin Erin usually hosts the family Christmas party. Over the years, Erin has learned that if she wants a party to get started at 2 pm, she has to tell my aunt Sophie that it is at noon, so my aunt will have sufficient time to wake up late, shower, make a sumptuous breakfast for her husband, do her makeup, vacuum the house, wash and wax the car, run into some burning buildings to save some orphaned children, and go last minute Christmas shopping. Erin then has to tell my mother that the party is at 3 pm because or else my mother will arrive three hours early, just in case there is traffic on the two mile stretch of highway she has to travel every day in the New Jersey suburban nightmare we call our home.

Last year, everything seemed to work out just right and Nagymama arrived with my mother right on time and marveled at my cousin’s beautifully decorated bi-level home.

“Some day, I’m gonna vin dah lotto and buy bi-levels for everyvon!” she says, in very cute, broken English.

"Yah, yah, you've been sayink dat for 40 years, give it a rest," my aunt said from the doorway, bearing boatloads of gifts.

As Nagymama removed her coat, her attention immediately turned to the several dozen Christmas cards that were neatly hung on the staircase. She immediately grabbed my cousin’s arm, pulled her down, and whispered in her ear with a whisper full of hot, wet air and cookie crumbs, “I know your secret, my child.”

“What are you talking about, Nagymama?”

“These Christmas cards…these cards were not sent to you. You just bought a box from the store and wrote them out to yourself so you would look more popular.”

My cousin couldn’t look more shocked.

Nagymama nodded knowingly, “Shh! It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone.”

Photo by Alaina Cherup

A Typical Thanksgiving

My family is pretty small, so they never want to prepare a full, traditional Thanksgiving. Instead, they prefer to go to the HomeGrown Buffet* (*name changed to protect the innocent), wait in the cold for 45 minutes to get a table, and feast amongst the other dregs of society.

Now before you crucify me, let me tell you that I typically like buffets. Sure, the food has been sitting out for a while and some little kid stuck his booger finger in the mac & cheese, but what the hell do you expect for $5.95 a head? But even with my general thriftiness, it somehow seems sacrilegious to go to a buffet on Thanksgiving (especially the HomeGrown Buffet, which is the “Motel 6 Express” equivalent of food service).

Years ago, I begged my mom to let me cook dinner and she got worried that I would burn the house down. Rather than argue, my cousin and I split the cost of one of those pre-made Thanksgiving dinners from the local grocery store. I was quite pleased with the relative ease and inexpensiveness of the meal, but my mother was extremely unhappy.
“Dese yams are shitty,” she said, as she took another bite of the creamed orange goo. “So, mom, next year we won’t buy them.”“Screw it, I vant to go back to da buffet. I like hafing a variety of foods.”

I don’t think “variety” is the right word. My family likes to eat the same food every single time, but they like the idea of having an endless supply of it to “play with”. Mom typically gets a piece of broiled fish that she mashed into a pile of powdered mashed potatoes, beets, corn, and chicken gravy. I think she likes making this concoction more than she likes to eat it, because she usually swirls it around for a while, talks to my aunt, swirls it some more, and then throws it out because it’s cold. This usually happens four or five times.Nagymama also really likes the idea of multiple servings…of cake, more cake, and nothing but the cake. My mom and aunt try to feed her some meat and potatoes, but she usually just stuffs the drumsticks in her purse and reaches for the carrot cake. She usually grabs a piece for herself, realizes that we don’t have any cake, so she places it in front of us, yells at us to eat it, and runs back up to the buffet as if they were running out of the stuff. This also usually happens four or five times. It’s actually kind of cute, but gets old quick when you realize that she’s stuffed cake into the pocket of her pants and you are the one that has to launder it.

In addition to the horrors of eating piles of pastries next to processed turkey fat with mushy stuffing and grape jelly instead of cranberry sauce, Nagymama is a bit hard of hearing and my family is naturally very loud. Like…REALLY loud. On more than one occasion, I’ve noticed people move tables just so they aren’t near us. This usually doesn’t stop Nagymama from running up to adjacent tables and following small children around the restaurant and patting them on the head. People usually think its sweet, but after a few minutes, it gets a little creepy when she doesn’t stop patting and they notice that she has cake and salad dressing on her fingers.

So, although everyone means well, our Thanksgiving usually ends up being an unnecessarily overindulgent, sticky mess. But if you think about it, there actually is something very uniquely “American” about that!

Photo courtesy of Garrison Photography