Well. Merry Christmas, y’all.

If you think the title of this post is dumb, I just want to point out that that is how my mother answers the phone from Dec.1st through to the Epiphany. Seriously. It’s full of cheer, pep and Christ’s love.

RING RING

Mom picks up phone: MERRY HO-HO’S!!!

Person On Other End: (sputtering) Um. Wha..hi? Rita??

I borrowed my roommate’s car on Christmas Eve morning (and by “borrowed”, I mean “stole”) and trekked out to Long Island with Tom in tow. We spent the crisp holiday morning listening to a category of songs from our youth. Tom once had a fabulous idea that he would start a Light Ghetto radio station where he would play only semi-hardcore rap and R&B songs from our high school years. Titles on this list include songs like Nelly’s “Ride Wit Me”, 3LW’s “No More” and Mya’s “Case Of The Ex” which includes the unfortunate lyrics:

“Did she hear about the brand new Benz that you just bought for me
Cuz yall didnt have no kids
Didnt share no mutual friends
And you told me that she turned tricks
When yall broke up in ‘96..”

Seriously. Incorporating the year 1996 into your ballad of cheating and playa-hating? Amazing. If you have suggestions for our Light Ghetto marketing campaign, please feel free to leave your thoughts as it still may come to fruition. Please note that we already know to include Big Pun’s “Still Not A Player” and Usher’s “You Make Me Wanna”.

Christmas Eve is a much bigger day for our family than Christmas Day. My mother’s side of the family congregates together and since our house was picked as the location this year, I sat down to dinner on Sunday night with 29 other people. All related to me. All FIRST cousins or aunts/uncles/grandparents. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, my family is the poster family for birth control. Populating a small third world country has never looked so easy.

My father was bustling around the house, getting things ready for our annual Polish Prayer Service. Wait. You didn’t know we did that? ME NEITHER.

A few weeks ago, I received a phonecall from him.

Dad: LAWRA. HI.

Me: Hey dad.

Dad: So. I’m thinkin’ of this idear. I’m thinkin’ of doing Christmas Eve POLISH.

Me: What?

Dad: You know. Serve Polish food, sing some Polish Christmas carols, I even have a Polish blessing that I printed out, you know, that type-a thing. We could get back to our Polish roots.

Me: That sounds great, dad but I don’t know any Polish Christmas carols. We don’t speak Polish.

Dad: Don’t worry, I do! And plus, I bought a Polish-American Christmas Carol karaoke CD. Don’t tell your mother.

Me: Ummm…where did you even…nevermind. I don’t want to know.

Dad: THIS IS GONNA BE GREAT.

Fast forward to Christmas Eve: After pouring my grandmother copious amounts of red wine, we all settled around the dining room table to listen to my father’s prayer service. He stood before us, his voice a little shaky and nervous which was odd since he’s a professor and has been standing in front of students for over 35 years. But I think this was a little different. Throughout the early part of the evening, he kept pulling me aside and asking, “Do you think people are going to like this? Is it okay that I talk?” My mother and I kept reassuring him that he would be fine and his confidence was growing until the priest from our local parish stopped by.

“OH NO,” my father cried out to me in a panicked voice. “Father Charlie is here!!!!”

“You love Father Charlie!” I pointed out.

“I know! But if he listens to my prayer service, I mean, WHAT IF I SAY SOMETHIN’ WRONG!? He knows a lot more than me about Jesus and stuff.”

But Father Charlie stayed and my father gathered his wits about him and proceeded to tell the story of the Black Madonna painting and how it is a symbol of freedom for the Poles. The story is too long to relate here and I can’t even do it justice because I don’t speak Brooklynese nor do I have his props to show you all. An imitation of my father is never as good as the real thing.

I do have some video clips on my digital camera from the service so if you ever want to see the CUTEST MAN ALIVE talking about Polishness, come to my house and I will show you. And then YOU will wish you could hang out with my father every day of your life too.

My best friend Alayna has only met my father once, after coming out to my house for a Sunday dinner. She was won over immediately by his improper use of the English language. Things only got better when we were getting ready to go back to the city and he handed me a stack of articles that he had clipped out for me. Among them? “The Truth About Omega-3 Fatty Acids”, “How To Organize A Small Apartment” and “Which Red Lipstick Works Best For You?” Alayna nearly fainted and whispered, “After you’re done looking them over…can I borrow those?”

When I told her about my dad’s upcoming Polish Christmas Eve preparations, she nearly flipped out.

“OH MY GOD!” she exclaimed. “Can you tell me how it goes!? I NEED PICTURES. I NEED VIDEO.”

“I know,” I said. “He’s got big plans.”

“Laura,” she breathed, “That is going to be the most amazing thing ever.”

Apparently, it is Polish tradition to break a wafer with your spouse or sibling or loved one and forgive them for whatever they’ve done to hurt you this past year. In turn, the other person forgives you too and you eat a piece of the wafer and absolve each other, beginning the new year cleansed and forgiven. My father took the lead with this and turned to my mother standing next to him. He clasped her hands in his and wished her happiness in the coming year and strength in all her decisions. And then he said, “I forgive you this year…” and couldn’t finish the rest because his throat closed up and he started to cry.

The room was silent as they kissed and hugged and my relatives touched the tears that were falling on their cheeks. We are a sensitive bunch after all. I shut my digital camera off at that moment and wiped my eyes.

And then I ran to the bathroom to throw up because WHO LOVES SOMEONE LIKE THAT, PEOPLE!? Blubbering on about forgiveness and love after almost 29 years of marriage. IT MAKES ME SICK. God. A sappy Christmas story was totally not what I was going for here. Humbug.

Almost entirely by accident, I caught the entire forgiveness moment on a video clip on my digital camera. When I watched the segment later after uploading it to my laptop, I realized that it seemed almost too much to watch, something so personal that I felt like an intruder.

In the end, I’m glad I have it. We have very little video footage in the house of anyone, ever. And now, I have a clip that showcases so brilliantly my father and mother’s love for each other. And though I’m not a part of that and though I’m still standing on the outside, it makes me believe that that kind of love exists and that I will find it eventually, probably when I stop trying so hard to find it.

Christmas tends to bring out an aching in me, an aching for someone sitting next to me around the fire, someone to try my vegan cookie batter, someone to hand me a box with a special gift inside, like a Loews Movie Theater gift card or you know, diamond earrings. But more than anything, this Christmas dulled the ache inside me because my family seemed so compassionate and so delighted in everything that was going on. And I can’t help but thank my father for setting the tone for that.

As we say in the fatherland and apparently in my house now, “Wesotych Swiat!”

Merry Christmas.