Yeah, this isn’t the story you had in your head...

The inlaws were right

You should have left the table if it bothered you. Also, it was HER fucking table. #teaminlaws

I had to be Christmas of ‘74. Nothing else comes close. We have family friends and we went to dinner at their house. They are a huge family of Christian Arabs, and they had a whole pack of older cousins, aunts and uncles there that year. Some weren’t real aunts or uncles, but were distant cousins, etc.

Thank you. <3 It’s tough sometimes, but life isn’t always about ME, you know? I’m very fortunate that I have a close relationship with my now grown kid, and we spend a lot of time together and enjoy one another’s company. And all that means more to me than where he might spend his time on any certain day of the year.…

Jesus fucking christ.

OMG. You were so restrained and polite.

Several years ago my high school aged son was planning to spend Christmas with his dad and his grandparents who live out of state, so John and Annie, my married couple friends, graciously invited me to spend the holiday weekend with them so that I wouldn’t be alone. My friends also invited John’s parents, his brother…

My parents divorced when I was 6 and by the time my siblings and I were in our teens, our visits with him had become fairly infrequent. So we were all excited when our grandmother invited him over for the holidays.

My family is pretty rife with alcoholics, druggies, and various inappropriate behaviors, but even I have to admit that the Christmas that Uncle Pothead told us about his recent medically-necessary circumcision because he hadn’t kept himself clean enough was really just not the best conversation to go with the mashed…

Hands down it’s the one where my asshole uncle picked a fight with my cousin (not his kid) who worked for a suicide prevention hotline. Uncle Asshole’s basic take on this was that Cousin was wasting their time and doing humanity a disservice because if people wanted to kill themselves, they should be allowed to do so…

JFC.  

Honestly?

My in-laws are genuinely nice people. They always make sure everybody has somewhere to go on Christmas. One year they invited my sister-in-law’s boyfriend’s mother because she had no place to eat for Christmas dinner. I had never met her before. She wore a denim jumper to dinner. She was in her 50's.

My friend invited me to her husband’s very Italian American Christmas Eve. His grandparents immigrated when the kids were very small, and so Grandad doesn’t speak too much English and the grandkids either speak some or no Italian. They were doing the whole Feast of Seven Fishes so I was more than happy to show up.…

Last year, I went out to a fancy Christmas Eve dinner with my Republican, Trump-loving parents. I made a happy announcement that my boyfriend and I had discussed getting engaged. My curmudgeonly dad proceeded to lay into me and tell me all of the reasons that my boyfriend would “never marry me,” including anti-Semitic…

This is just going to be a “how racist are your relatives contest” isn’t it? Here’s my entry, my granddad. He’s always so fun to talk to on the rare once every few years occasions I talk to him.

I found out that my mother was fine about my 13yo niece getting raped as long as she had the baby.

This is inaccurate, though. Sex is not based solely on genetics, and people who believe you cannot change your sex are not “scientifically accurate”.

There’s a link to a Guardian story in this article that explains it, and in that story there’s a link to the court’s decision. Essentially she expressed her view that sex is immutable and that “men cannot become women.” And she wasn’t exactly fired, her contract wasn’t renewed.