Every Christmas Eve, I go with my family to our annual Christmas party with our cult friends. Of course, I use the term “friends” for a lack of a better word. I call them my “Titas” and “Titos” and as far as I’m concerned, they’re the closest thing I have to family within 10 states. We have distantly-related family here as well, but we spend much more time with the people we attend church with. In any case, it’s tradition and it usually follows a set format:
-We get there a little before when Mass is supposed to start.
-Then, Mass stars about an hour later than it was scheduled for since, “The times are really just suggestions” one of my friends laughed.
-Afterwards, because we haven’t had enough Jesus-time, we pray the novena while I look hungrily at the food, which they always set up within 3 feet from the altar just to make sure I don’t try to sneak few bites before we actually bless the food.
-Then we eat. And I get so severely happy that all I want to do for the following hour is sit still on the couch and make a severely conscious effort to not move.
-And then when I feel I really have to pee, I run off and somehow always manage to find a form of alcohol on my way back to the said couch.
This Christmas Eve was no different. After eating, I drank and got tipsy off some fantastic wine. Right when I was about a 6 on the “1 to F*cked-up” scale, I somehow thought it was a great time to play the dance game on Kinect…and promptly fell smack dab on my ass, managing to flash the pre-pubescent teenage population of our makeshift “family” with my pretty pink underwear from Victoria’s Secret.
…Awesome sauce.
The best part was probably my sister throwing her head back on the couch laughing her un-busted ass off for about ten seconds before remember to ask me, wine glass in one hand, camera in the other, “Are you alright?OhmyGodthatwasgreat!!”
…The support I have in my life is astounding, no?
Now, minus that little moment of exposure, it was relatively normal evening for our Christmas Eve. Of course, there was a little hitch. Maybe about a few months ago, things got weird between a few our friends in our weird quasi-family setup. Long story short: boys have problems with each other, but they don’t want to “talk it out like girls” and are simply content to be avoid seeing or speaking to each other until “it passes”….which just sounds like a really easy way to lose a few good friends.
And I’d like to point out that I believe in communication, not because of my gender (fucking sexists jerks), but because if you have a problem with someone you love but are inherently too stupid and hardheaded to tell them that you have a problem with them, you’re pretty much setting yourself up for a lot of confusion, hurt feelings, and possible irreparable damage to the relationships you actually care about.
And I’m pretty certain I came to this conclusion with a little bit of logic and common sense (and not because my vagina told me so).
So while I had a decent time getting my buzz and watching our ghetto Santa pass out presents, there was a consistent feel that something and quite a few someones weren’t there. It was admittedly fun, just not the same without the rest of my pseudo-family present to laugh and have fun with.
Last year, there was a horde of us, drinking, taking stupid pictures and generally laughing our asses off over things that aren’t remotely as interesting if we were sober. I miss that. And I’d appreciate it if certain idiots would put aside their differences so I could have my fake-family together for the holidays.
Divorced couples can do it. Why the hell can’t they?
Written 12/26/10
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