Well if anyone mocked us we deserved it because we're not Jewish! I think Dad just liked the way the syllables felt.

OK, that's just awesome Laughing to death.

Or maybe he started callng it that after my sister converted to Judaism. But that's a story for another time.

Hmm... go with the first story for now. Wait, did your sister stay converted to Judaism?

I think she was (as my brother says) a jewess for a couple of years at most. iirc the last year we had a menorah I was in 7th grade and I know I was in jr. high when she started going to temple. Nevertheless I still know (pardon my phonetics) baruch atta attanoy, alohenou melach a olam!

The best part of the whole thing was that this was the way my sister chose to rebel against my parents. I just love that my parents were so open minded about our lifestyle choices that the only way to piss them off was to pursue an organized religion.

DebetEsse, that is an AWESOME story. They should film it and show it every year for Christmas Valentine's Day?

(don't know how to do the cross out thing!)

Debet could make a pretty penny doing that mail-order. You could mail her, items wrapped in alcohol soaked gauze and covered in plastic. Or something.

What's your biggest holiday decorating pet peeve? I can't decide between strings of lights that traverse the empty space bewteen trees and (I swear to god people in California actually do this) tin-foil wrapped trees. I could easily do a top ten list.

My holiday pet peeve major squick is: palm trees with lights wrapped around their trunks, so at night they look like giant lighted phalluses. So fucking creepy. Like something out of a Woody Allen film.

To me, nothing succeeds like excess in Christmas lighting. I am acquiring the beginnings of tacky. I have several deer, a penguin and some lighted candy canes. I restrained this impulse for years, but then I had an electrician put in an outside plug and now it's Katy bar the door. I don't think I could ever match the people in who used to decorate in a nearby neighborhood. Not only did they have the nativity scene; Santa and his reindeer; and assorted snowmen, carolers and angels, but they also ran lights all over the house and along the fence, and when they ran out of things to attach lights to, they crisscrossed the yard with strings of lights on stakes.

I say you don't have enough lights until you have your own pad-mounted transformer and your house can be seen from space.

Oh, part of my family leaving the tree up so late is that it doesn't go up until Christmas Eve. And, traditionally, Santa decorates it.

I say you don't have enough lights until you have your own pad-mounted transformer and your house can be seen from space.

Good woman!

And, being that I am, apparently, Kaylee-frelling-Frye, I not only fixed it, I even managed to hide the splice inside the body of the damn thing.

That is fantastic. I never even really know what's gone wrong when mine have died. Um, if I were to have such things.

Sometimes when you take things apart you'll find wires that have broken off their connections.

I've considered investing in a tiny soltering iron.

No reason, mind you.

I miss the old tinsel with the lead.

sighhhhhh

If we PROMISE not to eat it, can we have it back?

my grandma still has that tinsel. It was looking pretty shabby last time I saw it.