Raising JD: Fiesta de Navidad

After the taco eating, we got down to some serious partying. As the meal ended my aunt made me stand up in front of the group while she read a small tribute. (I should say this is the same aunt who, when my cousins and I were little, would organize the annual Christmas "show" where we would dress up as elves and sing songs. Thankfully, video technology didn't exist and no one was into 16mm film so there's no real evidence, aside from some non-digitized photos.)

Yes, she made me wear a crown.

When I left for Iraq, my attractive wife, aunt and mother all had bracelets made with my name on it. My aunt didn't take it off for the entire time I was over there. After her small speech I ceremonially took it off her wrist. I was very, very touched. Then I took off my mother's bracelet. My attractive wife had already taken her own bracelet off previously.

Then we went inside for a chaotic family picture. When my authoritative grandfather ran the show prior to his passing away in 1987, we all posed for a very formal picture after dinner but before opening the presents. Back then, we fit into roughly three rows: fathers standing, mothers sitting, and grandchildren sitting on the floor. With the family now spanning four generations, we just try to get in the same picture frame. We decided to try standing in my aunt's staircase. I didn't think it would work but was I ever wrong.

Photo courtesy of the Taco Man!

Then we started our family's infamous gag gift exchange. Back in the day, we actually gave gifts to each other but, as the family kept growing, this became increasing difficult to do, not to mention costly. For a while, we had a cousin-only gift exchange where we would buy one gift for another cousin based on a random draw. At some point, we gave up on that and just went to a gag gift exchange which is much more entertaining.

The prize gift in our family is the Boxing Nun. She made her first appearance several years ago and was an instant hit with three generations of Catholic-educated people in the audience. There's something about the maniacal expression on her face combined with the articulated boxing gloves that move in and out menacingly when she's held. I wrote in my Iraq blog how the cousin in Mexico who took her home last year, sent it to my aunt who then sent it to me in Iraq. She stayed most of 2008 with me there. Everyone in my family looked forward to her return from abroad.

This year's gift exchange actually featured two nuns. One was from a previous year and had a little damage to one of the arms. This was referred to as, "the Domestic Nun." My nun was, "the Iraqi Nun." Unfortunately, due to a packing error, my nun remained at home so I had to make a valuable coupon that the winner would exchange for the actual nun at a later date. The coupon was wrapped in a box.

Like all gag gift exchanges, gifts can be "stolen" a number of times (we decided on five times for this year's exchange) and that a gift could be stolen twice during a round. There were some good ones this year, as you can see below. Both nuns were stolen five times each and two lucky cousins went home with them: my cousin, Edith went home with the Iraqi Nun, and my cousin Beto went home with the Domestic Nun.