Family feud
It’s often said that weddings and funerals bring out the worst in families. After surviving last week, I would like to add Christmas to that list.
Having spent Christmas Eve with a gorgeous assortment of queer friends at the MCC Service at Town Hall, I woke up on Christmas morning in the festive spirit. All of that was to change within a matter of hours.
Christmas lunch this year was at my sister’s upper north shore home. This former Greenie swapped everything a few years back for life as a corporate housewife. So in keeping with her roots, I paid for a tree in the Daintree Rainforest to be named in her honour. But the gift was met with a look of thunder.
I want a tree I can see for myself, one that I can plant in my own garden, she snapped. You might as well have given me nothing!
My other sister was in agreement. Very soon, the pair had turned their attention on our sister-in-law, the nice one.
And, I know for a fact that those pots she gave you cost only $50, one sister whispered, as the other responded: And the wrapping paper she buys is always so cheap.
Then there’s my godson, whom I taught how to swim and used to pick up after school. As I arrived on Christmas Day, he mumbled from the sofa, Don’t give me a hug -“ I am too old now to be touched by your type.
My type? It reminded me of last year’s Christmas with my other sister-in-law, the evil one, when she told how she had finally watched the movie of Priscilla.
It was revealing, she shared. I’d never thought of you queers having feelings like that.
That was it for me. I was out the door and heading home to the safety of my sofa and a DVD viewing of The Sound Of Music, which provided some of the comfort my own family had not managed to exhibit this year.
But a decision has been made. Next year, the same deliciously and delightfully dysfunctional queer clan I spend Christmas Eve with will be the family I shall spend Christmas Day with, too. Whoever said you can’t choose your family did not know what they were talking about.
Stacy Farrar is on leave.
