Jesus Christ! It's a non-denominational Christmas!

I was raised an atheist and, in my house, even the word "spiritual" is said with a smirk and a raised eyebrow. The closest my mother comes is power yoga and my father, well, I think the one and only God in his world is Joe Paterno. This, from a bat mitvahed Jew and a graduate of a Catholic parochial school.

Christmas at my house has a different slant than in many homes. No midnight mass and no prayers of any sort, but we do sit down and have a nice meal -- not chinese food and Blockbuster. We get a tree every year, too, a big fucker of a tree, and we do it up pretty tacky, with a few generations of ornaments, ranging from a Penn State Rose Bowl Commemorative bulb to scattered homemade God's Eyes and Play-Doh stars and a couple years worth of the White House ones, too and the remains of some funky ornament party my parents through in the mid-90s. The lights are all white, though -- Mom's gotta draw the line somewhere.

For us, it's the second-most-important holiday of the year (Thanksgiving wins) and we celebrate it with typical abandon. Start with Champagne, end with Port and, in the middle, stuff yourself to bursting. Years ago, I remember choking on a huge mouthful of turkey, and my white trash uncle had to clap me on the back until I heaved the half-chewed bird back out onto my plate. "Now what you need to do is slow down, man, it ain't going nowhere," was his advice. Like so many other times he started a sentence with "Now what you need to do is," I completely ignored him. In this case, his advice clearly had some merit. Though I've managed not to regurgitate mid-meal since, I owe most of that to luck and good beverage access.

This year, with a sister absent for the first time in family history, Christmas lost a little of its luster. The fact that the sister in question happens to be in culinary school and is the primary chef for large family gatherings definitely increased this sense of loss, but we were 27/27 on Christmases until this year. Eff you, Liz.